<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>i remember how the earth stopped turning by roxast</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28020699">i remember how the earth stopped turning</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxast/pseuds/roxast'>roxast</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon Compliant, Career Ending Injuries, Gen, Mostly Gen, Other, Post-Canon, a fic about love without being about love, a fic about volleyball that is really about life, angst with an ending, the genre of kghn can be decided by the reader i tagged both to cover all my bases, this fic wound up being funnier than i thought it would be</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:01:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>73,322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28020699</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxast/pseuds/roxast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“The only time I will ever feel despair is when I won’t be able to play volleyball anymore,” had been his reply at the time, and while it was mostly just to show his teeth with no real intent to bite back, he’d said exactly what he meant, not a syllable spared.</p><p>Sometime later, Kageyama eats those words.</p><p>[or; Kageyama Tobio’s career-ending injury and everything that happens before and after]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hinata Shouyou &amp; Kageyama Miwa, Hinata Shouyou &amp; Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou &amp; Kageyama Tobio &amp; Tsukishima Kei &amp; Yachi Hitoka &amp; Yamaguchi Tadashi, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Miwa &amp; Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Tobio &amp; Everyone, minor miwalisa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>95</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>152</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. if i only knew the answer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>me: *reads through haikyuu for the first time in 2020 to make up for the tokyo-olympics sized hole in my heart*<br/>me: *sees kageyama*<br/>me:<br/>me: i'm about to end this man's whole career</p><p>fic title from the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPvtz3Sc6jE/">i remember how the earth stopped turning</a> from elegies: a song cycle by william finn</p><p>chapter titles from the killers' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzz2ml0dboA/">why do i keep counting</a>, but i also listened to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8j7XJxew7s">this song</a> quite a bit while writing this fic. both were essential for the writing process.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0myLSVHbdOFuzrrCv3gbqH?si=89ff033106e2482c">fic playlist</a></p><p> </p><p>additional content warnings for a few brief passing mentions of diets/food restriction and vomit, i'll include additional reminders in the notes for the chapters they are actually in!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first thing you should know is that Kageyama Tobio never actually learned how to swim.</p><p>And why should he have? Tobio had never been small, even when he’d been little, and when most of the creeks that carved paths and highways into the mountains of Miyagi scratched shallow, the pulse of their currents feather-light, there left little room or reason to properly learn how to butterfly stroke. The deepest that any of the woodland gorges or backyard creeks got around where he’d grown up were those slow sort of pools, where the water would pan out into something drawn like a circle and where the tide would flow like it had something to murmur, rather than babble. And sure, these pools could be truly, deceivingly deep—a “one wrong step or one good shove from your sister and the water is suddenly to your neck” kind of deep—but it’s not like it really mattered in the end. Not when everything he’d learned about time and space and strength as a lifelong athlete could be bridged in a grid that appeared in his mind’s eye and could help him muscle through, and not when he could simply, well, stand up. Tobio hadn’t needed to learn how to swim because without ever having been taught, he could rely on who he was to kick, tread, float in the water until those familiar lines and their perfect angles were drawn—or a teammate tried to dunk him under the surface, whichever came first— and he let his toes take root in the mud, aligned properly to the axis that’d been charted for him since birth, replacing any need to really swim with long, strong legs to keep him upright. In Miyagi, there’s the streams and there’s the mountains, and if the unstoppable force flowed as lax as the stream, the immoveable object simply needed to, first, remember itself, and second, stand.</p><p>The second thing you should know is that the grid was the first thing to go.</p><p>And maybe all this meant was that Tobio should’ve learned how to swim, because at some point, suspended in mid-air under the bright lights of Ariake Arena, between the point his fingertips sent the toss back toward the court and the point where the balls of his feet were supposed to touch the ground again, the matrix he’d been plotting on had disappeared. Poof. One second there, the next gone, one scissor snip and it all falls down, the lines merely thread that could slacken and drop. The grid had never done that before, not once in Tobio’s whole life, and the airborne observation that something was wrong only because he could no longer see those lines was really the only thing he’d immediately recall of his accident when prompted later by the faceless paramedic, en route to the nearest hospital. <em>I went up to make the toss, </em>is what he thought he’d said, anyway,<em> and then the grid disappeared. Something went wrong. I couldn’t see it. Something’s wrong. </em></p><p>Now instead of the stream, it’s Tobio who’s babbling now, or is it the paramedic? Something’s wrong, something about his knee, something’s wrong, something about his head, and he’s treading water again, up and down and in and out. First like the tiny waves that lap up along the side of a small mountain creek, then like the dunks and the pushes, with vigor and violence, until he’s nothing but a body and a brain that’s been washed out too many times. He tries to come up once, and the water is too strong, he tries to come up twice, and there are hands to his shoulders, forcing him below the surface, and he’s all about spent by the third time, when his mouth takes in some water on the inhale and Tobio goes under once more.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>UPDATE 1/16/21: i have links to fan art of this chapter courtesy of the generous and iconic twitter user shrimpchipsss:  <a href="https://twitter.com/shrimpchipsss/status/1345554414048694272?s=20">1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/shrimpchipsss/status/1345550637421846529?s=20">2</a></p><p> </p><p>if you have a twitter and you aren't following her what are you WAITING for??? if you have a twitter and aren't following me (@_roxast) that's probably ok actually.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. if i changed my way of living</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>here's my quick dedication to all my friends who i've known for 10+ years as well, who i thought about a lot while writing this and who will never know it exists</p><p>cw: there's the briefest mentions of vomit in this chapter (someone pukes twice, someone else makes a joke about it once).</p><p>brief disclaimer: while i spent a good while sorting through sources to get the injury-related components of this chapter and overall fic as to-life as possible, i am ultimately not a medical professional writing with deep understanding and accuracy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In volleyball, every match starts with a coin toss. A this or a that, an either/or, a choice between two potential opportunities is made, even when it doesn’t feel much like a choice at all.</p><p>A few coin tosses happen as Kageyama Tobio is rushed away from Ariake Arena and checked into the Emergency Department at Saint Luke’s International Hospital. Team Japan wins/loses the set to the Netherlands National Team, 20 – 25, taking the final match of the International Qualification Tournament for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Pool B, into the fifth set. A group of white-coated medical students sheathe/unsheathe their tongues like swords behind the back of their professor as they stalk a long, teal-tiled hall, debating whether Radiology should start with the MRI or the CT scan. A video of The King’s fall and subsequent injury is/is not uploaded to the internet and does/does not go viral within the hour. A boy, somewhere in Miyagi prefecture, is sitting/not sitting at his grandfather’s kotatsu, struggling to keep his eyes open long enough to eat dinner and every parent on planet Earth does/does not answer their cell phone when called by their oldest daughter three times in a row. Every bird flying above Tokyo does/does not land. Kageyama Miwa is/is not allowed into the National Team’s locker room by the athletic trainer to collect her brother’s belongings and does/doesn’t miss something vital and flat in his top cubby. Kageyama Miwa does/does not contact everyone who could possibly cover her for the NYLON shoot this week when a doctor warns that concussion patients shouldn’t be left alone for the first 48 hours after injury and weighs/does not weigh the pros and cons of letting Tobio sit in the hospital for those 48 hours so she can go to work. Kageyama Miwa is/is not, is not, is <em>not</em> turning into her parents by considering this as a near-viable option and does/does not throw her cell phone at the wall when the only notification she gets back from anyone at all is a promotional email from the ramen shop on the corner of her street.</p><p>A phone then rings/just rings. The device Miwa had nearly let shatter on the floor vibrates in her palm and her stomach flips sunny-side up as she fumbles to check the contact. Maybe it’s Alisa, maybe it’s her supervisor, maybe it’s finally one of her parents—</p><p>She frowns. It’s Tobio, his contact photo a squirmy smile next to Vabo-chan from an Adlers game a few years back. Miwa glances over her shoulder at the great pair of double doors on the far wall; she can’t see him getting the MRI from this sad excuse of a waiting room, two chairs and a table of magazines three years old, but she’d watched him go inside, pushed in a gurney bed by two medical students, the top of his head visible just past their shoulders. <em>NO CELLULAR DEVICES BEYOND THIS POINT </em>reads the red text posted to the wall.</p><p>On the fourth ring, Miwa does/does answer.</p><p>“Hello?” It’s a warm voice, familiar enough, if a bit nervous. “Kageyama-san, right? I found Tobio’s phone, it’s still here in the locker room.”</p><p><em>Shit</em> is what she wants to say. “Oh no,” is what she says instead. Miwa shuts her eyes, squeezes them hard. “Thank you for letting me know. If you leave it at the ticket counter, I can probably go back and get it—”</p><p>“Ah, that’s pretty inconvenient, isn’t it? Your hands are probably full there, so I can bring it to you if that’s easier!”</p><p>After the coin toss is a choice. In this case, it’s between leaving Tobio alone longer than she might really need to and so long that he’d finally hold something against her, between getting her calls screened and Tobio’s calls maybe, potentially answered. “That would be really helpful,” Miwa decides before too much time has past. “This is Hinata, right?”</p>
<hr/><p>The CT scanner sounds like a washing machine.</p><p>Or, what sounds like water rushing over his head is really the whir of the machinery that lets the scanner do whatever it does. He’s never gotten a CT scan before, never needed to, but he has fished out a number of wet socks that get half stuck in the gasket of his washing machine.</p><p>To remember that he owns a washing machine and what it sounds like, Tobio thinks, he would’ve had to have a life <em>to</em> remember before he’d found himself tucked in the white mouth of the CT scanner’s gantry.</p><p><em>Though that’s not right</em>, he decides calmly. He knows for certain he had a life before this and he doesn’t remember socks being all too important. It’s just that it’s only now that he’s alone, facing nothing but a blank slate and his own thoughts, can he really even begin to put words to the? Last few minutes? Hours? Day or so? Words that could turn into a log he might write into his journal (which he thinks he has), documenting where he’s been and what he’s accomplished (which he's sure he does). For Tobio to be getting a CT scan, now, he had to be set up for one by a grim technician with cats on her scrubs, who’d instructed him to stay very still and pay attention during the examination as though she’d already had to tell him once. To have gotten to this wing of the hospital, he had to be wheeled through long corridors and down glass elevators underneath what must’ve been the brightest lights in the world, illuminating the path necessary to get from the side of the building his room was on to the side where he’d go for a? What’s he here for again? Tobio had asked the technician as she’d helped him adjust his neck against the stiff pillow in a position comfortable enough to hold for twenty minutes. A CT scan, she’d replied, curt, the little orange cat on the shoulder of her shirt grinning all the same.</p><p>“Kageyama-senshu.” Crackling static introduces the radiology technician again and her disembodied voice over the intercom—Tobio is startled by the sudden company but he can’t seem to find the energy to jolt. “I’ll ask you again: breathe in and hold your breath.” And so he does, listening to the technician count without enthusiasm as the scarlet laser lights of the scanner pass directly over his eyes—one straight, bright line, then two—and he winces in pain, the air forced from his lungs a second too early.</p><p>Tobio doesn’t remember anyone telling him that the scanner would sound like a washing machine, but it does. As he is starting to piece together, this doesn’t mean no one told him at all.</p><p>The scanner seems to move from pre-wash to wash and Tobio reminds himself to focus. If he’s going to build a timeline, he can’t dwell on what he doesn’t know, not when there must be things he does. Wash, rinse, spin—before the CT scan and before the kitty cat scrubs, Tobio mostly remembers sitting in a hospital room with A Headache.</p><p>But that’s not all of it either, because he still has A Headache. He’d woken up earlier with one under those same too-much lights, screwing his eyes shut too tight to see stars. Turning out of the way was, and remains, pointless on a few fronts—there’s no hiding from the sun without shade, and no shade to be sought when still the gentlest of movements and the most muted of glows triggers the sensation of a knife being driven through the crown of his skull. What had saved Tobio in his hospital room that couldn’t save him now was the switch of the overhead bulb to turn off and the hand towel that’d been draped over his head to make a visor. What had saved Tobio earlier, in his room, that couldn’t save him now, inside the CT scanner, was Miwa.</p><p>Miwa must’ve been at his bedside before he’d woken up. She’s probably somewhere around here still; not getting a CT scan, but somewhere. As the piercing pain in Tobio’s head had dissipated into a much duller puncture, he’d managed to steady his heavy eyelids long enough under the shade of the towel to watch Miwa move in and out of his limited field of vision. Leaning over the side of his hospital bed and into his line of sight, she’d taken to fussing with his hair, then the towel, then her chair, then the towel again. He’d thought at the time that she’d looked strange. Bob drawn back into a ponytail, pulling a frown he felt used to seeing elsewhere, with—Miwa would end him, personally, if he ever said so aloud—a single, distressed line between her eyebrows running deep and furrowed. When she leaned out of his purview, his head and his gaze stayed put for their own safety, and Tobio had been left with just the murky sense that something was wrong with his sister, a view of the opposite wall of his room, beige and sterile, and the corner of a poster taped to that wall that might say something important if Tobio could see any part of it besides the handwashing symbol.</p><p>She looked, Tobio decided, in what was his first cohesively worded thought after waking up, like their father.</p><p>The scarlet lights return, along with the demands of the technician. “Again, Kageyama-senshu. Deep breath in, one, two…”</p><p>So before the present CT scan, the timeline of important events starts with A Headache, then the handwashing symbol, then his sister frowning like a stranger—Tobio had watched Miwa look at his forehead but not at him, and his second cohesive thought was that if he wasn’t sitting in a hospital with eyelids that weighed less and a head that wasn’t ready to split in two, then she’d probably scold him right then. <em>‘Why do you insist on doing this to me?’ </em>she’d say about his bangs, which Tobio had trimmed himself recently over the sink in his bathroom, <em>‘No, why do you insist on doing this to yourself?’ </em>He’d hoped she’d scold him at least a little, if only for one thing to feel correct and not wrong, but as soon as Tobio had thought so, Miwa had finally settled in her seat, looked him in the eye and whispered: “Your eyes look like they’re holding focus much better than they could earlier, so that’s good. How are you feeling?”</p><p>Tobio grimaced.</p><p>“Yeah, I can tell,” she replied, keeping her voice low. “But try again, this time with words.”</p><p>The thing about Miwa that made other people nervous is Tobio’s fault, she told him once. She’ll wait for other people to say what they mean, exactly how they mean it, perfectly impassive, which could be interpreted as, apparently, critical. She is the way she is, she’d explained, because Kazuyo would get on her when they were younger about filling the pauses in their conversations that Tobio spent digging for the proper words, how to say them and what order they went in, like she was the expert translator in a dialect that she and only she would ever know. He’d answered that he didn’t know how that made anything his fault, but maybe being made to wait for Tobio to find his words could make anyone ready to wait for the wind to be trapped by a net, as it goes, and with A Headache, it’d been hard to know how long he’d kept her waiting in the hospital room before he’d tried again, honest and grated and with as many words as he could string together:</p><p>“Like shit.”</p><p>“<em>Nice</em>, Tobio.”</p><p>Tobio takes another pause to locate another tepid phrase: “Did I die?”</p><p>“No, you just took a nap.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>But he’s never felt like that—this—waking up from a nap before. Foggy, mute, limp. “You were pretty exhausted, and they couldn’t get you back into radiology any sooner, so we had some time to kill,” Miwa explained as she leaned an elbow on the bed’s guard rail, the bottom of her chin only held up by her palm. “The nurses were very impressed that you managed to fall asleep during your MRI.”</p><p>So, he had gotten an MRI at some point. Tobio doesn’t know enough about MRI’s to know exactly what they’re for, just that they’re sometimes used to diagnose serious injuries that he’s never had, at least not up until now. His gaze flicked away—<em>ow</em>—from his sister to look towards his body for more clues, but everything below the middle of his chest was lain covered by blankets that still left him cold somehow, one thin and white, one blue and knit. Further down, Tobio noticed, for what might or might not have been the first time, his left knee elevated on some sort of cushion hidden under the sheets. Huh.</p><p>The thing that makes Tobio nervous about Miwa is that she really does know what he’s trying to say before he says it. “Does anything hurt?” she prompts with a yawn.</p><p><em>Everything</em>, <em>everything hurts,</em> but then, also accounting for his left knee and his feet and his shoulders<em>, although that’s not really true</em>. “My head,” <em>hurts the worst, the worst, the worst. </em>“But the rest of me is like—” it had felt like Tobio had to check-in and ask each of his limbs and organs individually if they were alright—“<em>fwoooo.</em>”</p><p>The line between Miwa’s brows didn’t quite loosen up, but it had looked a little like she might laugh at him. “That’s probably the fentanyl working.”</p><p>Tobio blinked.</p><p>“Fentanyl. Drugs. For the pain, amongst other things.”</p><p><em>Amongst other things</em>. “Like what?”</p><p>“Like, how panicked you are right now that you’ve just woken up in a hospital bed.”</p><p>“What? I’m not panic—” <em>Ah. </em>He had thought that to himself, at the time, in the hospital room with Miwa, and also now, in the washing machine of the CT scanner, about halfway through. Foggy. Mute. Limp.</p><p>“No, no, you’re not panicking at all. You’re doing great,” Miwa continued, just before she’d gone and done something truly odd; she’d taken one of Tobio’s hands in both of hers, dwarved in comparison. Like only a stranger who was definitely not his sister might. Sort of gentle, kind of soft, but wrong. “Do you remember anything from today, er—“ she’d stopped to squint at the wall to Tobio’s left, concealed because of the towel, maybe at a clock—“yesterday?”</p><p>A beat or two passed in dull silence, Tobio searching, Miwa waiting, Tobio deciding that something had to be wrong because Miwa really looked different and was also holding his hand, but that didn’t answer Miwa’s question, which he’d already forgotten.</p><p>“Anything at all,” she’d pressed again. “Do you know where you are? What time it is? Anything about the match?”</p><p>Ah. The match.</p><p>See? Before this—the CT scan, the hospital room, everything—Tobio had been something else. One hint turned out to be all he needed to remember that the smell of the hospital was different than that of a bustling gymnasium, that the lights overhead didn’t hit him the same way and his sister was not the only middle blocker he’d ever tossed to. The floodgates opened, and it didn’t matter so much if the water moved slow like honey, there’d been a whole life before Tobio wound up here, and that’s who he was, and he’d played volleyball. Today. Or yesterday. Whichever.</p><p>“Say it,” Miwa reminded him, pulling his attention back to her with a snap. “With words.”</p><p>Instead of relaying all he remembered of pulling on his socks and tying his shoes and seeing every seat in the stadium filled and standing, center court, in his uniform, red and white, “Did we win?” was the first thing Tobio asked.</p><p>Whatever strange net that had held his sister’s brows up with that deep, pained line had just then dropped, expression melting into something that looked a little less wrong, a little less like their father, a little more like Miwa. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she’d huffed through a small smile, “you guys won.”</p><p>“So we qualified?”</p><p>“Yes, you qualified for the Paris games.”</p><p>Good. Chest constricting good. Fist pump good. Tobio wanted to write this down in his journal to make it tangible, the satisfied satiation of a win—one that qualified him and the rest of the Japanese Men’s Volleyball Team for the 2024 Olympics, no less—except. His memory was still spotty and moving sluggish. He’s standing next to the net, in red and white, waiting for the shrill shriek of the referee’s whistle and then? And then? What?</p><p>Tobio remembered his grid, the one he sees when he’s really focused and in the zone and playing at his best. He remembers, trying to conjure it inside the CT scanner, wash to rinse, how he’d watched it disappear.</p><p>Miwa squeezed his hand again, Tobio had still felt too weak to draw away at the most, to tell her she was being weird at the least. “It’s okay if you’re missing parts, just walk through the beginning,” she’d coaxed, almost too grim before she’d added, with a smirk, “You didn’t forget what position you play, right?”</p><p>Tobio hadn’t even had the time to be insulted when he’d spat, “<em>Setter</em>.”</p><p>“Okay, <em>fine</em>. That one was too easy, got it. Just keep going, tell me more.”</p><p>‘The match’ in question had been the final match of the Olympic Qualification Tournament, Pool B, held on home turf in Tokyo. Team Japan had won in an upset against the United States on Saturday in a cutthroat, tooth-and-nail, dragged out final fifth set, 34-32. The air coming into Ariake on Sunday, with heads held high, spirits higher, sparked palpably, all excitement and electricity just at the tips of Tobio’s fingers. That said, The Netherlands National Team wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, no matter how good he or anyone else had felt. Their setter has an erratic edge to his sets that kept Tobio’s blockers on their toes, for sure. For every dig met with ease by Komori or Yaku, they had an even meaner spike from their Number 15; every spike from Aran or Hoshiumi could be countered from a dig by their Number 7 or their Number 16. Atsumu has some of the meanest serves in the world, but so did Number 4, and if Hinata could move faster than Tobio could ever quite catch up to, then their Number 8, to the unsuspecting eye—</p><p>“You said that already,” Miwa had cut him off, abruptly, simply.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“About the Netherlands’ Number 8, and how fast he was? You explained that already, two times in a row.”</p><p>“Oh.” Tobio didn’t—doesn’t—remember talking about the Netherlands’ Number 8 twice, but then that distressed sort of line had come back, and Miwa looked different again. “Sorry,” he’d offered.</p><p>Miwa just shook her head. In hindsight, the ponytail was probably a red flag, if not the implication that while he’d crashed during his MRI, she had not. “Don’t apologize,” she’d warned like her shoulders hadn’t tensed in the same breath. “And quit making faces. It’s been a busy couple hours, and you did hit your head pretty good, after all—"</p><p>It doesn't connect on the first try. It barely grazes him on the second. He’d hit his head? That’s definitely true, it felt obvious that he had hit his head, and yet, in the whole timeline he’s built so far— cutting his own hair, the Netherlands Number Eight, fentanyl, A Headache, the sun, washing hands, Miwa acting strange, Tobio feeling strange—he didn’t quite know where that was supposed to go.</p><p>“I remember playing,” Tobio said, suggested, really. Miwa just watched, and he wanted whatever he said next to be right, really badly. “I remember going up to make a set and—"</p><p>And?</p><p>He couldn’t retrace his footsteps exactly, but he could and had pulled back from Miwa to sit up a bit against the flimsy pillows and hold out his hands as if he was going to make a set. He goes higher, lifting his arms up in a sense and shape that felt more natural, ready and relaxed, hands separated in a silhouette that could only be described as—</p><p>“Like onigiri.”</p><p>Miwa’s shoulders dropped. “Seriously? You’re thinking about food at a time like—”</p><p>“I make hands like onigiri,” Tobio added, not that it was relevant at all, “when I set.”</p><p>It’d been too simple an explanation, altogether, but had done enough that Miwa had mimicked his motion, holding her small hands out and away from in her in the same sort of shape to see for herself. “Hands like onigiri?” She’d smiled, even smaller, mostly to herself. “That’s funny. Where’d you come up with that?”</p><p>Tobio thought about it. The memory feels clearer, crisper than most of what he recalled of the match. “You told me.”</p><p>“Me?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“No way.”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>.”</p><p>“When?”</p><p>Tobio thought about it a little more, hands falling back into his lap. “Practice, with the Birds?”</p><p>“No way, I—” Then Miwa seemed to think a little bit more about it, too, and then, she’d laughed one single, breathy <em>Ha</em>. “Tobio, that was like, what<em>, twenty years</em> ago? Is that really what you still think of when you go to make a set?”</p><p>Tobio had shrugged in response. “Sometimes.”</p><p>“Your big professional games,” Miwa continued, as critical as is assumed of her typically. “World class games. And of all the things to think about, you think about how once, I told you, when you were like, five years old, to make an onigiri with your tiny chubby hands in order to set the ball?”</p><p>Tobio frowned at his hands, not at all tiny or chubby, and even in the clarity of Tuesday night practices at the neighborhood rec center, it's hard to so much as conceive that they once were so. “You basically asked that twice,” he pointed out.</p><p>Miwa hummed. When Tobio looked toward her this time, the line was gone again, and a small, smug grin, like she used to get when she’d beaten him racing up hills, was in its place.</p><p>“What?” Tobio asked, nostrils curling at the mere notion of losing.</p><p>“I’m just thinking,” Miwa started with a shrug before she’d twisted her mouth into a something more devious, “about how you seem to remember what I tell you when I talk to you about volleyball, you remember what I tell you when I talk to you about food, but every time I tell you not to cut your own hair, it goes in one ear and out the other.”</p><p>That’d felt correct. That’d been the most normal thing to happen in the preceding few minutes.</p><p>Hours.</p><p>Day or two?</p><p>“Five more minutes, Kageyama-senshu,” the technician says, voice crackling over the intercom. The CT scanner picks up, rinse into spin.</p><p>Earlier, in his room, it’d taken just a little bit longer than five minutes, a little bit of scolding from Miwa, a drink of water and the promise of a snack for Tobio to come to enough to string more than six words together at a time. “I think I remember the match today,” he’d said, washing down some brandless crackers from a vending machine with water from a plastic cup.</p><p>“Yesterday,” Miwa corrected.</p><p>“Yesterday. Up to the fourth set,” Tobio agreed—out the window, between the glow of the city streets and the freckled sky is a vast black expansion. The ocean. “But I don’t remember how I got here.”</p><p>“To the hospital?”</p><p>“That. But also, why?”</p><p>Simple questions beg simple answers. But there’s an extent to which he probably hadn’t realized what he’d asked, whether or not he was ready to know or had already been told and just forgotten.</p><p>“You, uh,” hands wringing sleeves, a sigh—Miwa can usually be relied upon to be frank, “tried to hop the barrier for an emergency set. Your foot got caught, and you fell over it. Landed on your knee, hit your head hard enough to knock yourself out."</p><p>Everything in Tobio's chest stopped working first, the rest of his body very still other than the path his eyes had tracked down his leg to his knee under the blankets, elevated and bizarre. “During the game?”</p><p>“Yeah. In front of the crowd, unfortunately.”</p><p>Second, Tobio uses the remaining air in his lungs to clarify. “How long?” </p><p>“You were out cold for about twelve seconds—” <em>twelve seconds what is going on</em> “—so they—your coaches or trainers, I guess—decided it was best to rush you off to the hospital right away. You got here in an ambulance, I took a taxi once I got your bag out of the locker room, and now we’re here.”</p><p>And now we’re here. For being so still and so empty, nothing seems to make sense. Stick like honey, log like bullet points in his journal. Tobio wasn’t sure where his journal was at the time. He didn’t remember this happening. He did understand, a feeling more than an explanation, that the grid snapped in the air, after the jump, before the fall.</p><p>“Am I okay?” Tobio felt himself ask.</p><p>“Your ACL is torn, and you have a concussion. We’re waiting for a CT Scan to make sure there’s nothing else wrong in your brain.”</p><p>Tobio cutting his own hair, the Netherlands Number Eight, falling during the game, tearing his ACL and hitting his head, the ambulance, fentanyl, A Headache, the lights like the sun, washing hands, Miwa telling him if he cut his own hair again she would just buzz it all off next time he asked for her help. The timeline is slippery, sloshing around in Tobio’s skull with no traction or comprehension. Tobio still couldn’t panic, but he found himself to be more tired than he was when he’d first woken up. Not sleepy, tired. “Oh.”</p><p>“It’s okay. It’s really just a precaution to check for cracks or bleeding—” <em>cracks</em> or <em>bleeding</em>? “—but you’ve been coherent, so far, so everything’s fine. And after that Hinata will probably be here with the rest of your stuff, and then we can go home.”</p><p>At the mention of Hinata, something deep inside Tobio had immediately short-circuited, water poured over machinery.</p><p>“What’s that for?” Miwa deadpanned, squinting at him and whatever wide-eyed, horrified expression he might’ve worn on his face as he’d begun to, well, panic. “You look constipated. What’s wrong?”</p><p>“<em>Hinata.”</em></p><p>“Yeah? I left your phone in your locker on accident, he found it and called me and offered to bring it to the hospital.”</p><p>“<em>No.</em>”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“So I wouldn’t have to go back to the arena and leave you here by yourself?” Miwa made it sound like a question. It wasn’t a question, it was a blacked-out-for-twelve-seconds, a MRI-for-a-torn-ACL, a what-do-you-remember, a Hinata-intervention justification that not even the fentanyl could temper. “I’m sorry, did I get the wrong guy? Hinata’s the one you’ve been friends with since high school, right?”</p><p>Again, his thoughts are much more put together, now, with little else to distract him inside the CT scan, but looking back, Tobio’s feelings had developed into thoughts less like words and more like a series of broken alarms, still going off after being smacked with a hammer and left to strangle each other into cacophony. <em>Friends</em>? Friends. Hinata? Maybe. But that’s not quite right either. It’s just— they’re just— he’s just <em>Hinata</em>. Other people have someone like a Hinata, right? Other people have someone like a Hinata, and probably know that means the moment he’s allowed to witness Tobio for whatever he looks like right now he’ll either make fun—“<em>Kageyama-kun, you look </em>terrible<em>!”—</em>or worse, he’ll look as wrong as Miwa did and he’ll do it because something Tobio can’t wrap his head around right now really looks, feels, is that wrong. Something will be wrong, something will be worth panicking over, and everything will make sense.</p><p>Tobio felt—feels—too washed to deal with either outcome.</p><p>“I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would be a big deal. I mean, he knows you well enough to call you ‘Tobio’. Knows how to unlock your phone, because that’s what he called me from,” said Miwa, tossing the wrapper from the crackers and the empty plastic cup into a wastebin beside his bed. “Most people only do those kinds of thing when they’ve been <em>friends</em> with someone for, I dunno, a decade or so…”</p><p>The most irritating <em>beep</em> noise sounds over and over from a machine in the room next door, filling the lapse in conversation.</p><p>“Or like, with people they’ve gone to visit in foreign countries. People they’ve gone out of their way to play volleyball with for years. You know. Like friends. Like the ones you might call to help you with something you can’t do yourself without feeling embarrassed about it.”</p><p>The most irritating <em>beep</em> noises and scuff of someone dragging their feet as they walk down the hall all happen in synchronicity and it sucks.</p><p>“You got anything to say about that?”</p><p>Tobio huffed.</p><p>“That’s what I thought,” she’d replied, victory secured, before the technician and her scrubs greeted them from the doorway and explained that Tobio would have his CT scan now, if he wanted to leave the towel over his head in here, that would be great.</p><p>It takes the last of his energy to squeeze his eyes shut and put together the final timeline: during qualification weekend, the lines had disappeared, he’d gotten injured and brought to the hospital, taken a nap during his MRI, woken up to have a full conversation with his sister, and then been brought to the CT scan to check his brain. So now what? He’s exhausted, and there’s still the looming threat of Hinata, discharging when he’s allowed to do so. And then—relief comes in waves—then Tobio can go home. To his own bed, hopefully. Some place quiet and dark, at least. Probably sent with a rehabilitation schedule, detailing all the work it would take to fix his knee up again—</p><p>Something finally hits him, clicks, connects. Delayed and blurry, Tobio opens his eyes again to greet the white tunnel of the CT scan machine and the general recovery timeline to correct a torn ACL.</p><p>“I’m probably not playing for Ali Roma this winter, am I?” Tobio asks the red lasers.         </p><p>A voice from the intercom crackles out of nothing; again, Tobio doesn’t even have it in him to jump at the sudden sound. “Did you say something, Kageyama-senshu?”</p><p>He swallows. “I’m probably not playing for Ali Roma this winter, am I?”</p><p>There’s no answer, at least not right away, and there isn’t one for almost as long as it would take for Tobio to forget he’d asked anything at all when he hears. “The scan is almost done, Kageyama-senshu. You’re doing great.”</p>
<hr/><p>He could be wrong, but Tobio suspects he is being used.</p><p>“Okay, I’ll bite. Is it the dorms? Did you suddenly develop new and unusual allergies? Are you wearing a coat that’s warm enough? What <em>is</em> it?” Miwa smacks the thermometer—38 degrees even—against her palm with every question. Tobio also suspects that the thermometer might be a stand-in for his head, and from where Miwa’s sitting on the edge of her bed (the one he’s been relegated to for the night, the one he needs to lie down in diagonally to fit) she could probably make the reach. Miwa used to play middle blocker, after all. “You don’t make nothing playing pro, right? Surely, you can afford to buy a better coat.”</p><p>“It’s not the coa—<em>ah</em>—” Tobio’s protests are gradually cut off by the growing sensation of another sneeze that collects behind his eyes and squeezes his face. Like her middle blocker reach, Miwa’s reflexes are still quick, and she gets a Kleenex in his hand before he can finally muster a relieving <em>achoo</em>. “And it’s not like I got sick on purpose,” he says before unceremoniously honking into the tissue.</p><p>“That’s what you said the last time.” Miwa says this pinching her nose closed, and Tobio realizes if he’s not being used, and he’s not going to be smacked, then he’s certainly being mocked. “And the time before that. And the time before that.”</p><p>Again, it’s not like Tobio had set out with any intention to spend his first year playing V-League volleyball in Tokyo constantly sick, lying diagonally in his sister’s bed because his legs hang off the side of her small couch. He'd mostly just intended to play volleyball, and he did, and it'd been as good as he'd hoped. But the routine he’d thought he’d mastered to keep himself healthy in high school had been tested and replaced by a new cycle in November that had more or less kept until March: Tobio goes to practice, travels to another part of the country (maybe Hyogo, maybe Kyoto), comes back sick, stays in his sister’s studio apartment instead of his dorm at the National Training Center for a night or two, gets well, returns to practice, plays another game in another part of the country (probably not Miyagi), comes back sick, stays with Miwa. It shouldn’t have ever been this big of a deal, but the sniffles, the chills, a small fever here and there, all add up eventually to something Tobio can’t quite keep up with. Now, he could—Tobio could,<em> actually</em>—just sleep off the cold in his dorm, only getting up to drag himself to practice and to find something to eat at the cafeteria, but Miwa pointed out that by doing so he risked getting all of Japan’s national teams sick in some inadvertent form of treason. What he should do instead, and what he does with some frequency now, is take advantage of the short train ride to stay over at the apartment she could offer for a night or two but that she’d also been adamant he not move into. It’d been the point Miwa had finally been allowed to make after hanging up on their father twice when he called to explain that Tobio was moving to Tokyo after high school— Miwa was about to move into a new apartment with a roommate in Jimbōchō, so Tobio was not allowed to live with her, but he could come over and visit if he wanted, he’s plenty independent, Mamorou-san, he can take care of himself. </p><p>That’d been about this time last year, at the end of Tobio’s third year of high school. Now, Miwa’s still in the same apartment, no roommate unless you count Tobio, who comes to visit even when he’s not sick sometimes. And he <em>can </em>take care of himself.</p><p>“I just think this is getting a little ridiculous,” Miwa’s still talking, Tobio must’ve zoned out somewhere between the cotton behind his eyes and the cooling pad taped to his forehead. “Either you need a much better plan for staying healthy during away games, or someone’s thinking about you an awful lot.”</p><p>Tobio’s nose curls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“Not so serious, Tobio, it’s just a superstition.” When she gets nothing back to signal an understanding, Miwa waves her hands vaguely and continues, “you know, you get the chills, a sneeze or two when someone’s thinking of you? Must be all your friends back home.”</p><p>Tobio sneezes, once, twice; his Karasuno Volleyball Club jacket is on the top hook, on the wall by the door. His current concern is that this time next year, with the rate he’s growing, it won’t fit anymore.</p><p>“Unless you have some real serious enemies.” A beat. Tobio doesn’t grant that question an answer. “I mean, do you?”</p><p>Another beat, another, third, bigger sneeze gathering behind Tobio’s eyes.</p><p>“Enemies,” Miwa repeats. “Playing high school boys’ volleyball. Seriously?”</p><p><em>Achoo</em>. Relief comes in the form of a steady intake of air, and Tobio helps himself to another Kleenex.</p><p>Sometime later, they’re a few episodes into some reality television show that Miwa had chosen over V. League re-runs when someone’s phone vibrates. Tobio fumbles the sheets, checking his pockets before he hears his sister greet someone named Nagomi from her kitchenette, which altogether means she’s about as far away from the bed as his toes are from the hood of his sweatshirt if Tobio were to lay out on the floor. He finds his own phone shortly thereafter and unlocks it—0508, the day the Adlers beat out the Black Jackals to win the 2004 V. League Championships—the group chat he shares with everyone he graduated from Karasuno with sits quiet tonight.</p><p>“I can’t come out, nah.” A pause, some rustling as Miwa searches for her electric kettle. “I’m taking care of my brother again.” Another pause—Tobio realizes he is the brother—the sound of the sink as she starts to fill the kettle with water. “<em>Super</em> sick. Yeah.”</p><p>Now, this isn’t the first time he’s heard this before. It’s probably not even the second. Tobio’s heard this or something similar loads of times when they were kids back in Miyagi and their parents worked long hours—“sorry, I can’t come over after club, I have to go home and babysit my brother”. Except Miwa never really had to take care of Tobio, as far as he was concerned. That’s why they always spent so much time together with Kazuyo in the first place, and why once she started high school, she was allowed to skip practice with the Kitagawa Birds to do homework or hang out with her friends or whatever she did when she stopped playing volleyball. The time Tobio has spent sick in his sister’s apartment has probably been the most time they’ve spent together since she dropped out of college in Sendai to go to beauty school in Tokyo, but it’s not like Miwa’s any different now than she ever was when they’d been smaller (she did cut her hair, though—short, and buzzed at the nape of her neck), she just got older, and Tobio did too.</p><p>He <em>did</em>. Get older, that is—he moved away from home and everything—so there really is no obligation for Miwa to keep playing babysitter as often as she worries about his coats and his allergies that may or may not exist.</p><p>Once Miwa’s said her goodbyes and started the kettle, Tobio prepares his thoughts in the form of an argument. “Nee-san,” he doesn’t know if she can hear him, over the slowly rising boil. “Nee-san, you can go out.”</p><p>“It’s rude to listen in on other peoples’ phone calls, you know,” Miwa responds, clipped, tapping a few fingers to her chin as she scans the shelves above the sink like her reminder wasn’t a hammer to Tobio’s sense of propriety. “What kind of tea do you want? If you don’t have any strong opinions, I’m just making hojicha.”</p><p>Tobio mutters some kind of distracted affirmative before pressing on. “You shouldn’t have to give up time with your friends if you don’t want to just because I’m here, is what I mean.”</p><p>“That’s sweet of you, Tobio, but I’m just fine at home, watching <em>Terrace House</em>, drinking tea.” There’s the rustling of a teaspoon scooping the dry leaves, the clink of tin to porcelain.</p><p>“But it is ridiculous.”</p><p>“What is?”</p><p>Tobio gestures vaguely towards the cooling pad on his head, the bed he’s stolen, the general space he requires in an already small apartment. “All of this. You just said so. If you wanted to do something else instead, you should, it’s not like I need you to take care of me anyway—”</p><p>“<em>Wow</em>, okay. Make your own tea next time.” The kettle clicks itself off just as Tobio opens his mouth to protest again; Miwa turns away with her back to Tobio when she goes to pour the hot water into two small cups. “Listen, if I wanted to go out, I’d go out. Since I don’t, I’m not going to.”</p><p>“Okay,” Tobio sneezes again. “But this sucks.”</p><p>“Between the two, this is actually much more appealing,” Miwa says with a shrug.</p><p>Tobio looks between his sister and the television screen and can’t help whatever face he pulls next. “<em>Terrace House</em> is appealing?”</p><p>“Rude. I was going to say hanging out with you, but I take it back now.” Miwa’s face isn’t as ticked off as she sounds, taking the necessary six steps between the kitchenette and the bed to sit on the corner and hand Tobio a cup with steam rolling off the top followed by the tissue box. “And don’t make that face. It’ll get stuck like that.”</p><p>Tobio thanks his sister for the tea and blows his nose. He thinks to himself as they each take their own, quiet, tentative first sips, that all the people on <em>Terrace House</em> do is talk to each other and that they should’ve watched the game show where the contestants try to run the obstacle course with the foam hammers that push them into water and stuff. Only when he’s somewhere in the middle of his cup does he realize Miwa’s still sitting on the corner of the bed.</p><p>“All my friends are still friends with my ex and they keep trying to invite us both out together like nothing happened,” she seems to admit, mostly to herself and the commercials on the television screen. “It’s usually a coincidence, but when someone asks me to hang out now, I just say you’re having a hard time adjusting to Tokyo—” <em>adjusting</em>—"or that you’re homesick—” <em>HOMESICK, </em>Tobio sputters into his tea— “if you’re not already running a fever or something.”</p><p><em>Adjustinghomesickadjustinghomesickadjustinghomesick</em>—Tobio is somewhere between deeply insulted and deeply embarrassed, a feeling that pouts, but even that’s not as bad as the plain embarrassment that comes when what Miwa had said before that hit harder once he’d repeated it in his head. “That really sucks?” he manages to choke.</p><p>Miwa schools her expression to look impassively into her teacup as Tobio experiences a crisis. “Yeah, it does,” she says, like his forehead isn’t running so hot from exertion that his icepack isn’t cold anymore. “So, between that and working literally <em>all</em> the time, I don’t go out much. I know Mamorou-san thinks I do—”</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“You don’t have anything to apologize for, it’s fine—”</p><p>“No, I,” Tobio swallows. A lump in his throat, his pride maybe? He says what he means. “I’m sorry I forgot you had a boyfriend.”</p><p>Something distant crosses over Miwa’s face and Tobio doesn’t seem to recognize her. Like she’s older than twenty-six and different, like he wouldn’t know to pick her out in any of the given flocks of strangers that move in clusters around this giant, confusing city. Tobio hadn’t given much thought to the six-odd years on opposite sides of the country, but if the flow of a match can change in the hitch of his breath sometimes, then a few months, a year, a few years must be able to stretch enough to hold a lifetime sometimes. Maybe he missed something, a few things, something more than a whole boyfriend.</p><p>There’s a burst of laughter, suddenly. Miwa’s definitely laughing, laughing at him, hard enough that she has to gingerly set her cup on the ground, still half-full, to wipe a stray tear out of the corner of her eye.</p><p>“Tobio, stop thinking so hard, it’s okay,” Miwa wheezes through the last stretch of laughter before taking a deep breath. “You didn’t forget, you’re fine.”</p><p>“Oh.” Tobio exhales a sigh of relief.</p><p>“Yeah, you’ve already met her.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“You’ve met Kanako,” says Miwa, simply.</p><p>Turns out, Tobio doesn’t need to watch the foam obstacle course game show. He can just live it. Who is Kanako? Literally, who the hell is Kanako. He’s met a few of Miwa’s friends when she brings him places or when she can make his games in Tokyo (the timed, foam hammers). But he has to meet a lot of new people all the time these days and it’s not that he’s met so many of Miwa’s friends with any regularity that he can match names to whatever physical detail he remembers them by (the rope swinging above a mud pit). One was really tall but had never played a sport before, one had a beard that Tobio was jealous of, one had nails that looked fake but were just really well-kept and painted a vibrant blue (the two platforms too far away to jump between without leaping onto the three giant red balls, acting as a bridge, just so). There was the grad student he’d met a few times, maybe, who was very friendly and liked to knit. She’d made the scarf that she’d worn once the weather started to change, had made the one that Miwa liked to wear too, had offered to make one for Tobio once they’d gotten the move squared away—</p><p>Oh. That was Kanako.</p><p>“Oh,” Tobio says, and that’s the first thing either of them as said in a while. An undetermined while, because the commercial break is over and <em>Terrace House</em> is back on and Miwa’s still watching him and he has no idea what she’s thinking and while he’d already felt a little bad about disrupting her routine and making her sleep on the tiny couch he’d feel worse about saying the wrong thing.</p><p>Tobio takes his own deep breath just as Miwa cuts in, swift and quick.</p><p>“You don’t have to say anythi—” she starts, but then Tobio places a hand on his sister’s shoulder with a force less appropriate to comfort someone with and more appropriate to spike with. “<em>Her loss</em>,” he nearly spits, and when he concludes that’s all he has to say, clamps his jaw shut with enough force to bite off his tongue.</p><p>This time, the expression Miwa makes slowly, but surely, is definitely the one Tobio registers most as his sister. “Tobio, that’s my <em>shoulder</em>, not a volleyball!” she whines, knocking his hand away to cradle the point of impact, playing up the violence she’d endured. “And with your gross snot hands! What are you trying to do to me? Get me sick, too?”</p><p>“No!" He's louder than he'd intended to be. "I was trying to be supportive because you let me stay here all the time!”</p><p>“Do you always hit people when you're trying to be supportive?!" Miwa shouts back.</p><p>Tobio hesitates. </p><p>"<em>Tobio!</em>"</p><p>They eventually change the channel away from <em>Terrace House</em> onto the same violent obstacle course game show, and Tobio agrees to be the excuse Miwa needs to get out of any dissertation defense celebrations Kanako might be having the following weekend.</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “Kageyama, it’s Hibarida. I wanted to call you before you could call me and exempt you from any additional National Team responsibilities for the rest of the week. We’ll be ready to welcome you back once you’re ready, but what’s most important for you right now is taking the time to recover and recover well. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything.”</p>
<hr/><p>Outside of Sendai, there’s a little hospital within walking distance of Kitagawa Daiichi. If Tobio ran there after school, he could clear the mile or so of suburban sidewalks in about eight minutes. There were a lot of outlying factors to consider, though, like whether he’d get held up by the red STOP of a crosswalk or the (something) or (something else) started and he had to walk. He was a regular as far as regulars go in the Inpatient Rehabilitation wing, coming often enough that the nurse at the front desk, (something)-san, would sneak Tobio crackers out of his lunchbox while they waited for the clear to send him up to Kazuyo’s room. A growing boy, he’d say with a grin, could always use the snacks after a run like that.</p><p>He’s not sure of what he says or how, but Tobio gets one of the med students to stop pushing the gurney long enough to vomit whatever became of those vending machine crackers into a quickly and deftly positioned waste basket.</p><p>Something’s worn thin by the time the CT scan is over—the drugs, the first dose of reality that’d come with realizing what he’d be doing with his club season, something else. The ‘what’ if it all doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the ‘what does it mean’. But even then, the worst part about being pushed through the tiled halls towards the glass elevators this time is not how he wrinkles under the lights or how he bends near breaking under the weight of every audible sound. The worst part is that even when Tobio is surely too swamped in stimuli to think of much else, he’s reminded of how much he hates hospitals, as he wrinkles, and why he hates hospitals, as he bends. It fills him up, where he’d been empty before. The fear of what he doesn’t yet know about what’s happened, of what he’s forgotten, of outcomes and what it all means, really.</p><p>The grip he has on the cold metal barrier propped up along the side of the gurney hurts and his palm still stings as he thankfully takes a tissue from one of the med students to wipe off his mouth. But then the wheels start to turn again. They keep moving.</p><p>The med students make the turn around a corner and it’s from here that Tobio can just about hear Hinata talking to Miwa from all the way down the hall as he’s being taken to his room.</p><p>“Ah, Natsu is doing great! She’s getting ready to playforherowntournamentwiththe Tokai team next weekend, soshecouldn’tmakeitto the qualifiers.”</p><p>“Good for her! Tell her I missed her commentary wheneveryouhearfromhernext.”</p><p>“I’ll letherknow! She still raves about thestraighteneryourecommendedlastseason—”</p><p>The gurney bed comes to roll at a slower pace when accounting for then another corner and everything finally comes to a stop like the snooze button on an alarm once he's clearly crossed the threshold from hallway to patient room. Someone’s holding their breath, and outside of the antiseptic, the room smells like a train station and shampoo. Waiting. Watching. There's talking but it's whispering and once he fails to recognize one word, every word after that just gets strung up together to become indecipherable. Someone says he's done well, someone else says he looks like he's in pain and a towel is placed once more on Tobio’s head and adjusted to shade his eyes. The overhead light goes dark. A quick conversation runs too close together for him to really parse apart what was said, and footsteps that start as stomps grow quieter the further out the door they disappear.</p><p>He’d held his breath almost the whole time, Tobio finds. He takes a deep breath in, and then out again, a bit shaky on the exhale. And even though it’s not completely silent or perfectly blacked out, it feels safe enough that Tobio slowly opens one eye, and then two. At first, he only sees the same dim wall with the same maybe-important poster with the same handwashing symbol under the ring of the towel around his head. </p><p>Then, without warning, a shock of sunny orange forces itself into Tobio’s orbit, or rather, Hinata is leaning over the left-side guard on the bed to get a look at Tobio’s face under the towel.</p><p>When their eyes meet, there's a split second where Tobio thinks it's been a long while since they’ve seen each other, which obviously isn't true. Clearly only long enough for Hinata to end the match against the Netherlands, get a shower and a clean hoodie and maybe a meal and then end up at Tobio's bedside. They'd played volleyball together all weekend. They've probably seen each other almost every day since the start of the international season, being teammates in the same city, let alone present on the same continent. He even greets Tobio here, in the hospital, the same way he's greeted Tobio every day since he got back from another club season in Brazil last April.</p><p><em>"Kageyama-kun,” </em>Hinata says with a grin that starts trouble.</p><p>Tobio’s eyes snap shut again and he groans.</p><p>“<em>Shh</em>, just a bit quieter, Hinata-kun," says Miwa—actually, now that Tobio thinks about it, he could make a run for it if he really tried. “I’ve had to keep to whispering.” Tobio shifts the weight keeping him on his back, rolling slightly onto his left side in order to get enough momentum to roll completely up on his right.</p><p>“Sorry, my fault!” Hinata replies at a much lower volume than Tobio has known him to be capable of. He’s found the strength in himself to get almost half a roll up onto his side when he hears: “Is he trying to throw himself off the bed?”</p><p>“I think he might be embarrassed.” Embarrassed but <em>prepared</em>, Tobio bets once he boosts himself right side up, he could hop on his good foot all the way back to the elevator.</p><p>“Isn’t it a little late in the game for him to start experiencing shame?” Wait, he’s forgetting something. On his next roll-up, he looks around the side of the room otherwise concealed by the towel when he’s laying proper in the bed, faced straightforward. Miwa’s nodding in Hinata’s general direction from where she’s sitting in the chair, underneath which is his gym bag. He’d need it if he didn’t want to make his escape without pants, which he did not.</p><p>“That’s what I told him earlier, clearly he listened to me,” Miwa says to Hinata while looking Tobio dead in the eye. He knows he can’t take Miwa on his own, but Hinata’s always been a good distraction, that’s his whole thing. Tobio plans on being able to at least grab his shoes before he hops down the hall, into the elevator, and out the front door.</p><p>The rest of his evil plot comes to a screeching halt when Tobio first realizes he doesn’t know what part of Tokyo that this hospital is in, exactly, and second, realizes he’s being made fun of. “Natsu is the same way! Always has to put up a fight instead of admitting they need anything like they won’t always be the spoiled youngest sibling—”</p><p>“Am <em>not</em>,” Tobio interjects, kneejerked from his fantasy of escape.</p><p>“They’ll never appreciate what we went through, as the firstborn—”</p><p>“<em>Stop</em>.”</p><p>He doesn’t really mean it. They’re having fun, of course they’re having way too much fun, leave it to Hinata to have fun in a hospital. Tobio still doesn’t feel anything good, but he admittedly feels a little less bad than he did before he’d puked in the hallway. Miwa and Hinata, separately or together, are at least a step above the swampy sensory overload. But then he feels his mouth wriggle at the corners, just ever so slightly; unlike the villains in all the movies, who announce their plans just before the climax and their demise, Tobio won’t make the mistake of admitting any of this out loud.</p><p>“How much longer?” <em>Until I can get out of here</em>, he asks, squeezing an interruption somewhere between a few more digs he doesn’t quite receive.</p><p>Miwa yawns to his right, and Tobio is struck with the vague knowledge that she probably paced rather than napped while he was out. “Well, it’s about two in the morning. I’m guessing you don’t wanna take the nurses up on their offer and stay the nigh—”</p><p>“No,” Tobio cuts that off right there. “I want to go home.”</p><p>His sister hums while she thinks, not at him and anything he’d said, but across the blue and white blankets to the left side of the bed. “Well, Hinata-kun, I think that just about decides it, right?”</p><p>“No worries, he’ll be in good hands!” Hinata replies, before adding, “Don’t be mad,” definitely directed square at Tobio.</p><p>Any of the obvious follow-ups—‘mad about what?’—never get asked; what comes next is the back and forth of the new plan, not unlike watching the ball fly between the two sides of the volleyball court as a fan still learning the plays. Tobio does his best to keep up while moving his head as little as possible.</p><p>“I might’ve roped Hinata into another favor.”</p><p>“You don’t have to say it like that, Kageyama-san. I offered!”</p><p>“I tried, I really tried, but I can’t get out of the shoot tomorrow—”</p><p>“Today?”</p><p>“—today and Tuesday, but you’re under strict orders that if you decide to go home, then someone needs to be around to monitor you there instead of here.” Set.</p><p>“And I said that I could help by coming to stay with you!” Spike. An alarm goes off in a room down the hall, like the five-minute mark after a tap to the snooze button; if Miwa paced, Hinata probably ran laps.</p><p>Something he remembers: Tobio asked (something)-san if he’d ever seen a volleyball game while he’d waited with his crackers one day. (something)-san said he had, but found it difficult to keep up with anything before the ball hit the ground.</p><p>“The irony of this isn’t lost on me,” Miwa concludes, apologetic and exhausted. Tobio doesn’t know what she means by that right away, not when he’s still back on the alarm, the ‘strict orders’, and the ‘coming to stay with you!’ It almost—he doesn’t—it reminds him—the plan makes sense, he supposes. It makes more sense than hopping on one-foot solo towards the elevator and hoping for the best, and to have three people in a hospital room and then have all three of those people leave is better. It’s just better. But as far as needing someone to stay with him, once they’ve made a run for it...</p><p>“Well, you don’t have to look so excited,” says Hinata in a deadpan, and Tobio absently finds that his mouth is open, prepared to ask all the questions he thinks he has.</p><p>So if he doesn’t want to stay here, which he doesn’t, no way, Tobio’s option is to go home with someone who can look out for him, in addition to dropping their schedule for the next two days. Miwa has work, which is important to her, and Hinata, apparently, has time. Okay, but it’s more than just being sent home with an antibiotic or a reminder to drink more fluids, which is to say, “Is it that bad?” he asks.</p><p>Miwa’s eyebrows furrow close together. “Is what that bad?”</p><p>Before the CT scan on his brain, Miwa said (something something) about going home once Hinata brought Tobio’s phone back from the locker room. He doesn’t think, not totally sure either, that she’d mentioned anything about not being left alone after mentioning his torn ACL, which means it’s worth asking: “Is my brain bleeding?”</p><p>She shakes her head, which thankfully means she’d followed. “Oh no, they don’t think so,” Miwa says, and means it. “It’s just a precautionary thing, to make sure someone’s around who can help you just in case something does go wrong.”</p><p>“Right, better safe than sorry!” Hinata chimes in, and even though there was no doubt, he means it. “Plus, it’ll be easier to recover if you don’t have to do everything all by yourself!”</p><p>Tobio glances at his bag again, lying still under Miwa’s chair to his left, then towards the door, behind Hinata to his right. He hadn’t accounted for stopping to tie his shoes during his Plan A. He would’ve gotten caught anyway.</p><p>“Okay,” Tobio whispers, and he means it. Plan B is his out, and he wants out of this bed and this room and the lights and the noises. He's overwhelmed. Miwa seems overwhelmed too, if okay enough with the plan, so it should be fine, and two days with Hinata, who seems overwhelmed—well, they spend a lot of days together, anyway. It’s just Hinata, after all. <em>I can take Hinata</em>, he thinks. “You have to bring your own toothbrush,” he goes on to clarify. “I don’t think I have any spares."</p><p>“Okay!” Hinata replies, mischief creeping back into his grin, hair, whole self. “Slumber party!”</p><p>Tobio shushes him immediately.</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “Kageyama-senshu, it’s Uchida, as you know, from the JSA. Hibarida-san has let me know you’ve been exempt from all National Team press this week and your medical team has updated me regarding your status. I have elected to field all requests for interviews and comments until you call me back with your interest level. There are many, but you shouldn’t take any until you are ready, and so I will not accept any until you tell me, over the phone, that you are ready. My advice to you while you are recovering this week is to not look at any newspapers or press before calling me first. Please rest easy, and don’t forget to call me back. Do not forget, Kageyama-senshu. Thank you.”</p>
<hr/><p>Tobio’s apartment isn’t big so much as it is spacious, and it’s not spacious as much as it is empty; all the jokes that could’ve possibly been made about his aesthetics, or lack thereof, have already flown over his head at this point. As far as what he needs for the six months of the year that he actually lives in Japan, the apartment functions as it’s intended to, and it’s a simple set-up—he lives in a high rise with higher ceilings, a full kitchen that he only really started using to its full potential during quarantine and a balcony that faces west, which means for about two hours on clear days like they've had so far this August, the setting sun illuminates almost the whole living room, kitchen, and hall to the bathroom in the warmest, kindest shades of yellow and orange, gold and bronze. </p><p>The light that bleeds through the glass balcony doors can’t quite reach Tobio’s bedroom on the far end of the hallway. Past the washer and dryer in the closet and the bathroom opposite that, if Tobio keeps his bedroom door closed, blackout curtains drawn, then no matter how bright it is outside, he can remain in near-total darkness, the hustle and bustle of the city street below mostly white noise from this high up.</p><p>All this to say, Tobio wakes up in darkness on Monday, but instead of his phone’s alarm breaching the silence, there is singing.</p><p><em>Bad </em>singing.</p><p>The next thing he notices is that his throat is dry from sleep when he croaks, “Nee-san?” Tobio knows it’s not Miwa, the only other person who has a key to his apartment; Miwa doesn’t sing to herself, never, not once. He’s not sure how best to describe what her footsteps would sound like, but the purposeful patters that move from what sounds like the kitchen all the way to just behind Tobio’s bedroom door with record speed don’t seem like— it hits him here that Miwa works today and tomorrow.</p><p>Hardly a minute awake and the dull nag of The Headache is back, either never having left or making it’s return in time with the slow and gradual opening of Tobio's bedroom door. Tobio keeps his head trained straight ahead, looking up at the ceiling to watch how the light spreads there, poking and prodding until it can brighten his whole room, and in the doorway stands the offense. The shadow outlined on the ceiling doesn’t belong to Tobio’s sister—not with hair like that—but to one Hinata Shouyou.</p><p>“Nope! Just me.” One disturbingly chipper Hinata Shouyou and his same black Jackals sweatshirt and the savory smell of something like lunch. He tosses Tobio an icepack for his left leg, still elevated, which Tobio catches by the very edge. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Kageyama.”</p><p>‘<em>Welcome back</em>’, he says. ‘<em>To the land of the living</em>,’ he says. Hinata only makes sense from time to time, and Tobio isn’t usually taken to the idea of throwing something at his head so suddenly. Granted, nothing about this morning (afternoon?) feels normal yet. “Why?” he asks instead.</p><p>“Why what?” Hinata asks at volume—<em>ow ow ow</em>—and apologizes softly when Tobio hisses a hush. “Sorry! Why what?”</p><p>“Why are you here?”</p><p>“You know why, Kageyama. You’re not supposed to be left alone for the first forty-eight hours after being released from the hospital, remember? And Miwa-san couldn’t get off work, so,” Hinata holds his arms out, waving vaguely towards himself like he’s the product in an ad. “How’re you feeling?”</p><p>Tobio pulls his blankets up over his head.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Hinata sets off the fire alarm.</p><p>Tobio can feel the sound behind his forehead like it’s a hammer hitting a nail between his eyes, over and over, <em>thump thump thump thump.</em> Between thumps, he is honest; he knows the smoke detector in the kitchen can be a bit touchy, he’s set it off a few times himself with nothing but the graze of smoke off frying oil. “Moron,” is what he says instead.</p><p>“Well,<em> sor-</em>ry!” Hinata keeps his pouts at a whisper as he hands Tobio a small bowl of what he was able to salvage of the omurice and plops into the plain, wooden chair he’d dragged in from the kitchen. “It’s not even burnt! I was doing just fine, it’s you who needs to replace the battery on that thing!”</p><p>After he takes his prescription and replaces the warm icepack with a new colder one, Tobio takes his portion with his thanks. It's good enough that the bowl empty before long.</p><p>“You seem weird,” he says quietly, setting the bowl on his bedside table where there’s room between a lamp, turned off, and a half-empty box of tissues.</p><p>“I seem weird?” Hinata leans back in the wooden chair, feet up on the corner of Tobio’s bed, awfully composed. “<em>You</em> seem weird.”</p><p>Okay, not an unfair point, but he has an excuse. Hinata might as well be hiding. “What about press?”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“There’s always press today,” Tobio says, a thick feeling on his tongue as he tries to make his counterpoint. “You’re skipping.” </p><p>“Oh what, now that we’ve won the Olympic qualifiers?” See? There’s the walk in the park, Hinata makes everything sound so simple. “It’s fine. We already won, what else is there? It’s not like the team needs me to do press, and Hibarida-san gave me the clear to skip until the team visits the local youth league tomorrow night.”</p><p>What goes unsaid is how often Hinata gets ahead of himself, and how that often means he’ll get tongue-tied when talking to reporters. It’s a little funny, actually, funny enough that he often gets cast as one of the National Team’s spokespeople when it comes to interviews and press conferences regardless. Even for tomorrow night—a Hinata who likes kids and attention but also trips over his own feet just about makes up for the unusually high number of National Team players who don’t like attention and don't know how to talk with anyone younger than fourteen. It's a love-hate, being seen. “Coward,” is what Tobio replies.</p><p>“Shut up!” Hinata says this through a mouthful of rice and vegetables before bothering to chew and swallow. “Wait, before that, how are you feeling?”</p><p>To be fair, Hinata isn’t alone, Tobio's relationship with the press is spotty too, probably more so. Just when he thinks he’s used to it, he’s reminded of why it makes his spine crawl, and being seated in front of a microphone, expected to answer in whatever given language the question is in, would still feel more comfortable than the numbness of his knee, the ache in his head, and the request to describe what he senses but doesn’t understand. Because his Japanese is typical, if not lazy in all the ways a native speaker can afford to be. His English is still so-so. Italian? Barely passable. Portuguese? Once he’d asked Hinata to explain how to ask for the bathroom, Hinata had instead given him the translation to order more beer. But Tobio doesn’t hate press because he gets tongue-tied or camera shy, he hates press because it’s what happens after he’s already said what he’s needed to say on the court. <em>How are you feeling? </em>What’s he supposed to do if he can’t send a quick to tell someone he believes in them, a synchronized first tempo to call on all of his friends at once, a setter dump to show off how confident he’s feeling? Without his receives to say “it’s good to see you” and his serves to say “here’s what I’ve been up to since I saw you last”, what’s he supposed to do?</p><p>“Kageyama?” Hinata repeats, and who can be sure how many times he's tried.</p><p>“I think,” Tobio starts, still thinking of tempos and tosses, “I think I’d send a four?”</p><p>“Out of ten?”</p><p>“No. A four.”</p><p>“Oh, like tempo!” Hinata affirms before stuffing his face again. “Still so slow?”</p><p>Tobio thinks for a moment and then nods.</p><p>Hinata hums, craning his neck to look into Tobio’s empty bowl on the nightstand. “Maybe you need seconds?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The omurice comes back with a vengeance sometime after his next nap.</p><p>What’d started as a harsh, but dull sort of throbbing had progressed into migraines so profoundly painful that it leaks through the numbness the medication is supposed to provide to pool in his stomach and make him feel ill when he stands up for too long. He finds this out after he goes to the bathroom, tries to take a piss on one leg and a crutch but then ends up also vomiting. Hinata tries to enter, lights off, while Tobio's bent over the bowl and exits once Tobio points a finger back out the door. When he finally emerges, a film of sweat across his neck and back adding to his overall feeling of grossness, Hinata hands him his second crutch, gives the bathroom a once over and says, “Good aim, Kageyama.”</p><p>Unfortunately, he doesn’t stop there. “You know, I’ve realized who you look like,” Hinata says once they’ve made it back in one piece to the bedroom, crutches discarded beside the nightstand, and Tobio’s successfully switched into a clean, dry shirt. He feels his eyes narrow before he really wraps his head around what Hinata could mean. </p><p>Hinata remains unperturbed. “I’ve been wondering, because you’ve obviously been a bit out of it since yesterday, but I feel better now that I can put a name to face, you know?”</p><p>“I look like myself,” Tobio says, brackish.</p><p>“Well sure, you look like yourself, but less like you usually do nowadays and more like you did when we were first years in high school.” Tobio is so confused it’s about all he can muster just to glare. “See, just like that! Same pout and everything. Do you need to go back to the bathroom and check the mirror?”</p><p>Tobio hadn't bothered to look in the mirror when he'd been in the bathroom, had ignored the light switch as well. “That still means I look like me."</p><p>“Yeah, but you got much more tolerable with age. You usually don’t look so,” Hinata steps back and smooths down his hair close to his forehead. “<em>‘Dumbass Hinata! I want to do everything myself! I never suck so obviously the world must bend to my every wish and will-’ </em>Hey!”</p><p>He’s only stopped when Tobio aims and launches a pillow for Hinata’s head. It goes a bit wide, but still manages to smack him on the nose. Room for improvement.</p><p>Hinata is sputtering on a single down feather that ended up in his mouth when Tobio asks again.</p><p>“Why are you here?” Tobio demands.</p><p>“Because—<em>pffbt, pffft</em>—your sister—”</p><p>“I know,"<em> but you didn't have to do this, you could've gone out and celebrated with the rest of the team yesterday, could have gone to press, could have been anywhere else besides here with the ice packs and whispering and the smoke alarm but, </em>"but <em>why</em>?”</p><p>It’s unstoppable force meets immovable object, spear and shield, between the two of them, but what else is new? “I don’t understand why you keep asking, it’s not like I need a big reason.” Hinata gingerly wipes his slobber, and thus, the feather, off his mouth before tossing the tissue in the nearest wastebin. 2 points. “I know you’ve spent your career in perfect condition, all the time, King Kageyama, but sometimes when regular people need help, they ask for it, and when someone is nice enough to offer it, they say ‘thank you’!”</p><p>Oh. Tobio’s learned this before actually, should have known that he’d learned this lesson before.</p><p>“So,” Hinata folds his arms over the angry Jackal logo printed on his chest, the one he looks suspiciously similar to, at the present moment. Stupid, stubborn, objectively correct, “unless you really want to do this all yourself.”</p><p>Tobio answers fast. “No.”</p><p>“Good, glad we’re in agreement, because I’m not going anywhere.” A rumble and a groan sound loud from Hinata’s gut. “Except the kitchen, maybe—”</p><p>“And then back here?” Tobio asks just as Hinata turns on his heel, really asks, actually.</p><p>“Sure? I can pull up a chair again if you want me to.” Hinata turns around just enough to watch Tobio carefully over his shoulder. “Am I going to bother you?”</p><p>Tobio considers this. “Are you going to set off the fire alarm again?”</p><p>“No!” A pause. “I’m just catching up on <em>One Punch Man</em>. I can wear headphones though.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Okay then,” Hinata nods and grins small. “Be right back.”</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message]<em> “Kageyama Tobio!”</em></p><p>“Tobio-kun, what the hell happened to ya?”</p><p>“<em>Atsumu</em>, this was supposed to be <em>nice</em>—Kageyama, it’s Aran and Hoshiumi and unfortunately Atsumu. We all just wanted to check-in with you—”</p><p>“Tobio-kun isn’t some wiltin’ flower, he knows we’re callin’ because we care—”</p><p>“And because we know, without a doubt that he will recover soon and prove the press wrong!”</p><p>“Guys, we said we weren’t going to bring up the press—”</p><p>“It hasn’t even been two days and they’re already calling this the beginning of the end of the Monster Generation, Kageyama-kun—”</p><p>“Which is bullshit, them all assuming, like, we’re being taken down with ya? Unless there’s a curse of some kind…”</p><p>“Wait, what if we’re cursed…”</p><p>“And we get taken down, one by one…”</p><p>“Just like <em>The Ring</em>!”</p><p>“Kageyama, Aran again. I should mention Sakusa is here to wish you well too, he’s just been smart enough to keep his mouth shut so far.”</p><p>“It’s their mistake to underestimate you—”</p><p>“Yeah, like, we’re clearly not even talking about the same Tobio-kun?”</p><p>“—and it will just make your return to sport all the better when you can crush their expectations with your newfound strength and renewed surgical setting ability!”</p><p>“<em>Any-hows</em>, Iwaizumi-san’s bringing some goodies from us over to you at some point, so stay where you are.”</p><p>“Atsumu, <em>he can’t move</em>—”</p><p>“Keep building up your strength, Kageyama-kun, but not too fast! More haste, less speed!”</p><p>“Take good care of yourself, Tobio-kun, and you’ll be back to normal in no time! We’ll just carry the National Team on our backs for all the pressers and media days this week!”</p><p>“<em>Atsumu</em>!"</p><p>“Although, press might be… easier. If Hinata Shouyou was here as well.”</p><p>“Yeah, please send back Shouyou-kun when you get the chance? Thanks a ton, Tobio-kun.”</p>
<hr/><p>He must have fallen asleep again somewhere between the snorts Hinata directs at his iPad screen and the low rumble of his air conditioner, because Tobio is reluctantly blinking back to consciousness at the sound of his name, fuzzy and faraway from the comfort of his bed.</p><p>“Kageyama.”</p><p>Now, there’s no doubt that Tobio heard his own name. He’s awake enough to recognize that he’s been called to. Called to by Hinata, about from the doorframe, just like this morning (yesterday morning?). This time, he ignores it.</p><p>“Kageyama, come on.” Hinata’s gotten closer now. Tobio continues to pretend that he’s not there at all. He wants to go back to sleep, he’s that tired. “Wake up,” Hinata demands.</p><p><em>No way.</em> Tobio leaves his face under his blankets and makes not a single effort to show that he’s awake, because there’s no reason for him to wake up. Because it’s out of practice to wake up concussion patients every four hours to make sure their brain damage didn’t strangle them in their sleep. Tobio was not strangled in his sleep, which is all the more reason to return to. Hinata continues at the head of his bed, setting a series of items down on his bedside table, steady does it—something that sounds on the wood like skin on an apple, one of his glass tumblers, likely filled with water, the jingle of a prescription bottle. After that, a beat of nothing but the blow of his air conditioning unit, until Hinata calls his name one more time. Another beat, and Tobio thinks he’s warded Hinata off until a finger reaches out to poke him in the face.</p><p>“Come on, if you don’t take these now, you’re gonna wake up in pain tomorrow.” How aggressive can a whisper really sound? Very aggressive, turns out. “And the directions said you’re supposed to eat with the medication. I promised your sister, and I don’t want to get on her bad—”</p><p>Tobio snatches the loosest pillow from the stack under his head and whips it in Hinata's direction. It makes contact. Not bad, since Tobio’s eyes are closed.</p><p>“Seriously?” Hinata complains, tossing the pillow back to land next to Tobio’s head—a threat. “Just say you’re awake!”</p><p>Tobio says nothing of the sort. What he means, even as he’s absolutely alert, is let him sleep.</p><p>There’s more movement in the darkness, steps taken to the foot of the bed this time. “Kageyama, I’m not doing this for me.” Hinata gathers up the corner of Tobio’s blankets, kinder and thicker than those at the hospital, and gives them a test tug. Cool air seeps into the carefully curated warmth he’d created for himself and Tobio decides he will kill Hinata. “I’m doing this for <em>you</em>.”</p><p>When Hinata gives a sharp pull on the blanket, exposing Tobio to the night air, Tobio takes his good leg and all the power he can muster and uses them both to kick down, straight into Hinata’s—</p><p>Tobio’s eyes fly open at the wheeze Hinata makes as he sinks to the floor, hands between his legs, a white flag of utter defeat.</p><p>Clearly, his aim had struck somewhere he hadn’t intended to strike, and yet, bullseye’d.</p><p>“Oh no,” he says.</p><p>“‘<em>Oh no’</em>?” Hinata sounds hoarse. “That’s all you have to say for yourself? After everything we’ve been through, Kageyama, you sick and twisted…”</p><p>Tobio sits up now. “I take it back.”</p><p><em>“You can’t take it back.”</em> Past his exposed feet and the edge of his bed, is no sign of Hinata, other than the smallest patch of red hair laying vibrant against his plain blue carpet. “All you had to do was say that you were awake!”</p><p>“I’m awake.”</p><p>“<em>Not now!</em>”</p><p>Hinata stays on the floor while Tobio eats his apple and takes his meds. Hinata stays on the floor until his breathing slows down, and then slows down some more. Tobio doesn’t always know what he doesn’t remember, especially today, but he does recall one thing: Hinata snores.</p><p>“Don’t fall asleep on my floor,” Tobio says to the foot of his bed.</p><p>“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” the foot of his bed bites back before he yawns.</p><p>“Don’t sleep on the floor, dumbass, if you don’t want those youth league kids to wipe the floor with you tomorrow.”</p><p>Hinata sounds like he’s stretching. “Sleeping on the floor is good for your back," he says just as a joint, maybe his back, cracks. Tobio makes another pillow sail through the air and crash into something fleshy. Hinata yelps.</p><p>“Fine, fine, fine.” One hand to grasp for purchase in Tobio's blankets, then two to pull himself up to his feet, Hinata looks as though he’s seen things. “Do you at least have a futon?"</p><p>Tobio thinks for a moment about the contents of his closets, his storage unit in the basement. “No.”</p><p>“<em>Boo</em>.”</p><p>“I have a couch,” Tobio offers.</p><p>“Have you ever sat on your own couch, Kageyama?” Hinata asks, and Tobio scowls before he can so much as point out, “I’m better off on the floor.”</p><p>“Then you take the bed and I’ll take the couch!”</p><p>Hinata recoils, shakes his head with fervency. “No way, bad idea. I’m not telling your sister I took your bed and made you sleep on <em>stone</em>.”</p><p>“As if you could make me,” Tobio replies, dragging his legs along with the inch of his upper body as he makes his way towards the edge of the bed.</p><p>“Please don’t walk without crutches,” Hinata reminds him, moving towards the wall they’d been leaned up against on the other side of his nightstand, maybe out of Tobio's reach? Maybe not.</p><p>Tobio wasn’t sure, but he’d already been provoked, so he's determined to find out. “I’ll get them myself,” he says, swinging his feet around until they’re parallel to the floor and then—Tobio swallows. He feels stupid, stupid because when his feet hang over the edge of his bed it’s like he doesn’t know where they are. <em>Are</em> they parallel to the floor? Are they connected to his body at all? He has to check, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. He knows he has a knee injury, but forgot he had a knee. Tobio goes cold from wherever the soles of his feet connect to the crown in his spinning head. That rhythmic throb pounding in his skull? His own pulse, he realizes.</p><p>When he goes to put his weight to the floor, just to see if he can, his left knee goes loose and then shouts.</p><p>“Stop it, stop it,” Hinata's voice attempts to be baleful, but there’s a <em>please</em> in there somewhere, so Tobio sits back, goes to swing his legs back up to the side of the bed, off-center, askew. “This is an awful lot of movement for someone who’s supposed to be on <em>bed</em> rest."</p><p>Tobio makes no effort to re-center himself to the middle of the bed and won't any time soon, not as Hinata goes to elevate his knee where he lies. The vast, dark expansion between himself on the left side of the bed and the right side of the bed could be measured, but for all he's sure of, it’s just present. “What if we—"</p><p>“Don’t even say it. Remember Brazil?," Hinata retorts, voice grinning. "You wanted to kill me in Brazil, and then I tried sharing a bed with Tsukishima, and then he wanted to kill me too! What if I kick your knee out in your sleep and the doctor needs to—” he yawns again“—reattach it, or whatever.”</p><p>“That’s not how it works.” Tobio pauses then. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”</p><p>“Me either, but one thing is for sure,” Hinata flashes that brilliant, threatening expression again. “I am a danger, Kageyama.”</p><p>Tobio scoffs. “Yeah, a danger who has National Team duties tomorrow. Get in the bed.” Before that sounds weirder than it needs to, he softens up. “Just take the right side, so you’d kick my right leg instead of my left one.”</p><p>Hinata shrugs, makes moves to slide and settle under the covers until he so much as touches a foot to the sheets and retracts, nose curling. “Ew. It’s already warm under there.”</p><p>“I’ve only been here all day, dumbass.”</p><p>“I’m sleeping on top of the covers,” Hinata decides, claiming a pillow for himself after checking for a cold side and falling, starfish, onto the right side of the bed.</p><p>“You’re going to be cold," Tobio mutters.</p><p>“I wouldn’t get cold if you were a normal person and let some fresh air into this—” another yawn “—cave you call a bedroom. The night is probably perfectly cool. It was really nice outside today.”</p><p>A pause. “Was it?”</p><p>“Yeah, picture perfect. T-shirt weather, a few clouds in the sky, but no wind. When you crashed for the bajillionth time, I hung out on the balcony for a little bit, er, all day. Do you use the balcony often? It makes the clouds feel so close..."</p><p>It’s enough to make anyone doze off, paintings of the birds in a cerulean sky, the taste of the summer air, fresh even in the city, the sparkling view of Tokyo Bay caught between the slivers that separate skyscrapers. </p><p>Almost enough, anyway.</p><p>“Kageyama?” Hinata calls again, a little louder above his newly-acquired whisper.</p><p>Close to kip, Tobio's eyes open against his better judgment. “Stop.”</p><p>“I can’t sleep now.”</p><p>“Try.”</p><p>Hinata exhales straight into the pillow, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt over his head; Tobio keeps his gaze straight ahead, on the white of the ceiling, willing his eyes to close again, come on, just one more time…</p><p><em>Damn it</em>. “I can’t sleep either," he settles for a scowl.</p><p>"Oh good!" Brimming with relief, Hinata flips himself onto his back, fidgety to share the energy that they probably wouldn’t have right now if he’d <em>just listened to Tobio</em>. “Are you still feeling okay? Still at a four?”</p><p>Tobio thinks about it, really thinks about it, would rather sleep on it, and Hinata taps his fingers against his stomach while he waits. “I would say a three,” he eventually decides.</p><p>“Okay, that’s an improvement then!” Hinata replies, almost surprised; Tobio doesn't make any moves to turn his head, but can catch out of the corner of his eye how Hinata's tan finger splay and dance of their own accord against the black fabric of his hoodie. “I couldn’t tell, you made a weird face when you tried to stand-up, so.”</p><p>He's somehow always making a face. “When I tried to stand-up?” </p><p>"Just a little bit ago when you were moving for your crutches," Hinata goes to clarify.</p><p>“Oh, right,” Tobio replies, and all the thinking he’d just done about how he currently feels gives way to dread, the thump of his heartbeat and nothing else. He’s back on his words, stuck on the specifics of communicating what exactly sits sticky and swampy in his throat, in his gut. “The grid snapped, when I went up to make that play,” he tries to start.</p><p>Too far back, maybe. Too vague. “What grid?”</p><p>“The grid I see when I play. The lines I, uh... align my tosses against. Or that tell me where to stand, sort of?” Where to jump, where to land, how high, how low, his general sense of balance and movement, all of it, wrapped up in a perfectly, acutely measured matrix—this is what Tobio tries to say. “Do you do that too?”is what he asks.</p><p>“Not exactly, but I think I do something kinda similar!" says Hinata, with the snap of his fingers. "So, when you play, you visualize a grid, and that helps you perform at your best, right? When I play, and I’m like really in the zone—"</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“I think of the beaches in Rio I played on way back when.”</p><p>“Oh.” Tobio knew this, actually. He’s definitely mentioned it, in some faraway memory Tobio doesn’t have the energy to dig up, but Hinata’s definitely made jokes about it before. Offhand comments about how the wind is carrying his passes today when there’s no draft in the gym, something about salt in his eyes where Tobio had presumed he’d meant sweat; Tobio usually lets it go, chalked it up to another metaphor that didn’t hit because Hinata altogether makes sense even when he doesn’t make sense, so what does a joke about the ball cap he’s clearly not wearing matter?</p><p>And yet, here they are, trying to make sense of Tobio’s personal beach, which isn't even a beach. “You’re saying you usually see a grid and when you—” a barely perceivable pause “—wiped out, on Sunday, it wasn’t there?”</p><p>“Yes,” Tobio affirms, eased like he's one load lighter. “It’s never just gone away like that. I wouldn’t have fallen so bad if it’d been there. And I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get it back once I can play again.”</p><p>Hinata gives a nod; they’re not looking at each other but Tobio feels seen, anyway. “Are you a three because of your head or your knee or because of the grid?”</p><p>“The grid,” can't be fixed with a visit to the hospital, seen in an MRI, soothed with an ice pack, “makes the rest of it worse.”</p><p>And because he gets it, Hinata hums low in his throat. “That’d freak me out, too,” he admits. “But it's not like you're playing volleyball tomorrow."</p><p>Tobio frowns at first, before he really knows what Hinata means.</p><p>"I think you’ll have some time to? Relearn it, I guess. Or learn how to relearn it, or learn how to feel ready to play without it. Or whatever,” <em>yawn</em>, a big one this time “whatever works, you know?”</p><p>Whatever works, whatever works. Hinata starts to snore before long, and Tobio lets himself sink into the sheets.</p>
<hr/><p>If Kageyama Tobio had either the know-how to work out the math or cared enough to sit down and try, he would come to learn that in the last eight years, or 70,080 hours, of his life, roughly sixteen thousand of those hours (16,640, to give a better estimate) have been spent playing volleyball.</p><p>Think about it—between the seasons he gave the Adlers, Ali Roma, and the Japanese National Team, Kageyama hasn’t had a real off-season since the wet winter after he turned seventeen, in the weeks between Karasuno’s trip to Spring Interhigh his second year and the first (official, supervised) practice of his third year. With this as a starting point, if he ever so decided to take such a challenge seriously and assigned numerical value to the time he spent in a gym, on average, warming up and cooling down, going to practices and games, mandatory team meetings and work outs, he’d know that those activities collected about 40 hours of any given week, and with 52 weeks in a year, totaled to an approximate 16,640 hours of volleyball over eight years of professional play. (Somewhere, Tsukishima is railing at the estimate of 40 hours <em>every</em> week. What about Golden Week? What about holidays? What about the few weeks between seasons? This isn’t about Tsukishima. Tsukishima is a know-it-all.)  </p><p>(This is about Kageyama and all the time he had to add up the number of stray shots he’d taken to the head, neck, back. How many times? Why didn’t he know? Why hadn’t he been keeping track?)</p><p>The initial approximation of 16,640 hours, with all of this in mind, might be just acceptable enough to represent the whole of what it means to play volleyball on the highest stage, hypothetically, but just ask Kageyama, just ask any professional athlete—that’s not really all there is to it.</p><p>Between practices and matches, he might meet the team’s physical therapist up to three times a day sometimes (another 5,824 hours, maybe?), or his nutritionist, once a week or so, (only about 416 hours, she intentionally keeps their meetings short), or the team doctor (1,248 hours, he likes to talk), or even Iwaizumi-san (who talks less but is omnipresent in the gym and sometimes also takes him to lunch). Then there’s the fact that he’s become known for playing volleyball, see, and press and sponsors and fame aren’t exclusive to just the Ohtani Shoheis and Hanyu Yuzurus of the world—photo shoots for advertisements and press conferences and outreach work and meetings with his manager and his coaches to coordinate all this, does, in fact, take time (and another 3,328 more hours, though this estimation is tricky—playing for the Italian league probably quartered his normal press responsibilities during, say, an Olympic season). There’s also the time between those times, traveling, by subway to get to practice (about 30 minutes, so an hour back and forth every day - do short detours to walk around Koganei Park count as part of the commute?), by plane to play a match halfway across the world (too many hours, usually), and times where that takes twice as long as expected (estimating outliers like emergency overnight layovers and time zone differences might confuse even the likes of Tsukishima and Yachi, right?) (right). There’s also the things that he does for volleyball even when he’s not thinking explicitly about volleyball. A rare occasion, but humor me—how much to sleep and how much to nap, when he can go for a run and how long the run can be, looking for the brand of socks that won’t bunch up in his sneakers, exactly when to eat what for optimum performance at game time, and oh look, we’re back to thinking about volleyball.</p><p>(Kageyama is a model athlete in that he always does what is asked of him, always. And so when he’s asked to look towards the next battle and no further, it’s what he does. When he’s not asked to keep track of the number of times he could have potentially sustained a minor brain injury, he does not.)</p><p>ACL surgery takes about two hours tops, followed up by about six months of phased rehab before a physician can sign off on a return to sport. Counting the hours it’ll take before Kageyama gets his knee back, at this point, is counting unknowns, but he’s seen other players go through this before. It’s a sheepish smile, showing up to practice on crutches just to be nosy, and a reluctant “well, my trainer says everything is healing up nice/therapy is going smoothly/I’m proceeding better than expected, it’s just a matter of keeping the ball in the air for as long as possible, right?” (right).</p><p>The concussion, on the other hand? No one seems to know for sure, not a thing. His brain isn’t bleeding, so that’s probably a good place to start. His skull, believe it or not, hadn’t sustained any injury so heinous that he’d need reconstructive surgery (Kageyama, personally, doubts this). Right now, it’s “wait two weeks to see how you feel”, but how is Kageyama supposed to feel in two weeks, let alone now? He knows the limit of his knee, knows from looking at it that there’s something wrong with it, that it needs work; when it comes to his brain, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know until he (suddenly, violently, painfully) knows. Lights hurt his head. Sounds do too. There’s so many words he can’t recall until he’s prompted, memories he’s afraid of he’ll lose before he knows they’re gone, holes in those memories he doesn’t realize are there until he’s falling down them. (What was here before? What was here before?)</p><p>(Kageyama dreams in volleyball, too. Isn’t that the worst part?)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>a handful of arguments between kageyama and hinata were cut from this chapter but assuredly still happened, here are the highlights:<br/>-arguing over whether or not hinata should have used the ingredients kageyama already had in his kitchen to make food<br/>-arguing over the line "king for a king" re: the size of kageyama's bed<br/>-arguing over whether or not hinata is afraid of miwa<br/>-no argument, just fawning over nicholas romero and his beard and the fact he's been playing volleyball as long as either of them have been alive</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. and if i pave my streets with good times</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cw: brief diet discussions (in dining hall) and vomit mentions/slight body horror (during the dream sequence), very minor mentions of blood (in bathroom)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When it comes right down to it, volleyball is like waltzes and like bad things in that it happens in counts of three. One, a receive, a step to the left, forgetting to charge your phone until you go to check the time and realize it's dead. Two, a set, a step backward, locking your keys inside your apartment when you're in a rush to get out the door. Three, a spike, a twirl, a concussion. </p><p>It’s just before sunrise on the second day of a two-day shoot and Kageyama Miwa is still recovering from only getting three hours of sleep two nights ago because that’s how old she is now. Hear that? She’ll say it again if she must. She’ll remind the barista, she’ll remind the models who flit in and out of her chair, she’ll remind the photographers, in case anyone forgot. Coffee doesn’t work for her the same way anymore, the melodrama that is being in your twenties is altogether unimpressive to her now, and she can’t pull all-nighters like she used to: Miwa is (feels) old, let alone grown-up. Understanding this is key to understanding what happens next.</p><p>Chances to come up for air and check her phone between hair and make-up are few and far between but Miwa finds/finds just one sometime before the sun comes up. She has the same number of notifications as she did when she didn’t have enough time to check her messages before her shift started, which is three, from three separate people.</p><p>The first is a given.</p><p>[1:13] good morning!!! after sleeping on it some more i decided i was still right and that you’re overthinking it!!!</p><p>[1:13] and if you need to call in the wee hours of the morning after you’ve checked in with tobio again i’ll definitely answer on the first try this time milaya 💕</p><p>The Venn diagram that encircles the Japanese fashion industry and the international volleyball scene connects in the middle with three people: Kageyama Miwa (when and only when someone actually makes the connection and offers an “oh, that’s cool?” in a tone that suggests they don’t know the difference between a jump serve and a jump floater) and the Haiba siblings. That's two people Miwa knows who can so much as begin to understand her current predicament, except Miwa only really knows Lev through Alisa and Alisa, who most certainly understands how to parse apart Miwa’s malaises better than Sato-san at the station to her left and Arai-san at the station to her right anyway, is in Los Angeles for the rest of the month. The smog of the city makes for beautiful sunsets, as Miwa hears from a rooftop bar serving drinks alfresco six hours in the past. Or is it the future? Altogether, the time difference has been, gently put, inconvenient.</p><p>“I think I overestimated how close they are,” she had admitted over the phone on her commute home last night once Alisa convinced her not to hang up, she was totally free to talk at five in the morning—maybe the sunrises in LA are just as nice. “Tobio looked like he’d rather chew glass when I told him Hinata was coming by.”</p><p>Alisa snorted, too tired to even pretend like she doesn’t, when she’d laughed into the receiver. “Would chewing glass be worse than being left alone in the hospital for him?”</p><p>Miwa watches the city go by alongside her shoulder; it’d been awful lucky that she'd happened to catch an empty train car at this hour, without a soul to listen to her think aloud as the wheels crashed into the rail over and over, rushing past the multicolor lights that float, unanchored, outside the windows. “No, probably not,” she replied.</p><p>“See, then you still did the right thing!” Alisa said, which was a nice thing to say, objectively. But Alisa’s frame of reference for brothers in trouble was, again, Lev, who calls her whenever he’s been remotely inconvenienced, who kisses her cheeks when they greet each other with great bear hugs, who’s never been his sister’s charge, just her brother. It’s a nice sentiment, but not the same, not when, like all Kageyamas, Miwa and her brother are polite and neurotic and bound to something, something else.</p><p>“Miwa, milaya,” Alisa continued, like she could’ve snapped pretty, manicured hands at Miwa to bring her back from the floating lights if only she really had been as close as she sounded. “I know you want to do it all yourself, but you can’t. Between Tobio and the shoot and taking care of yourself well enough to do everything over again tomorrow,” <em>yawn</em>, “you can't just fix it, you know?”</p><p>Miwa had clicked her tongue, a <em>tsk</em> against what wasn’t technically a challenge. “Can’t I? Can’t I though?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“I dunno, maybe if I put my back into it.”</p><p>“<em>Miwa</em>.”</p><p>The second is another update in an ongoing series of updates from the other side of the world/Venn diagram.</p><p>[6:32] he’s definitely cranky even though he must’ve slept 16 hours yesterday. but he’s been taking his prescription and he can keep food down as long as he doesn’t get dizzy.</p><p>[6:33] he zones out more than usual i think? worse than usual? will keep you posted if i notice anything else!!!</p><p>It's not that it's disappointing, Miwa just expected more exclamation points somehow. Emojis maybe. GIFs. Something the kids are into these days, something needless that would ultimately tell her about as much as the plain texts do.</p><p>There's a few things of import here, in Hinata's messages, obviously. Cranky. Dizzy. More than usual? Worse than usual? But there's a larger trend at play, where Miwa still can’t be sure how Tobio comes off to other people. She’s heard as many opposing takes for as many years as he’s been alive from people who technically know him; Miwa does him a solid even when he's not there and agrees with all of the nice ones (you're welcome, Tobio). Is he really a prodigy? Maybe, but it's ultimately less offensive to her than "slow". Is he as kind as he is to his fans? Absolutely, and he's never once been aloof or grave or hangry. Is he cool? (No?) Sure, she'll grant cool, she'll grant anything short of curing cancer, probably. And then she'll cut hair and ignore his placement on another sports rag's top eligible bachelor's list instead of doing something drastic but overall Miwa doesn't think so much about what other people think of her brother. At least not until she chews over that she calls her friends “friends”, and her coworkers “coworkers”, and calls Tobio’s friends his “friends” where he usually says things like “teammate” or “old classmate” or “a senpai”. Something specific. Maybe being that specific matters on the other side of things, but what does that make Hinata? What does “cranky” or “worse than usual” mean over there, to him? If Tobio isn’t his friend and isn’t doing well, would he just say so? Or is this the "prodigy", "kind", "cool"? Hinata's already the type to get up at 6 AM on their day off, that could mean he's also the type to—not lie, but agree to the nice ones. </p><p>Miwa's going over to Tobio's after work tonight anyway, so she types out a thanks and takes a rain check on grinding her teeth any longer.</p><p>The last message was one that she’d been avoiding since she’d blinked twice at the name connected to the text that’d rung her phone just after midnight.</p><p>She's not sure how to answer politely to Mamorou-san dropping a silver-platter opportunity to do something that isn’t nothing, because the first thing he’ll say if she’s anything less than polite is that she’s being impolite. Failing to respond after seven or eight hours is probably already impolite, but in her defense, he started it, two days ago and years before that. She’s old, remember? Grown, and (gag) like her father (<em>ugh</em>), polite and neurotic and bound to something else. Maybe he wouldn't be like this if she'd stuck it out with the statistics degree, but the data suggests otherwise. </p><p>When Miwa finally swallows her pride long enough to open the text at all, it’s as disappointing as she anticipated.</p><p>[12:32] Is it that urgent? He has you there with him.</p><p>What Miwa does next—and she moves swiftly—are the actions of someone younger and angrier; she links/does not link her father to a YouTube video that replays Tobio’s accident, turns/does not turn her phone on silent, face down at the far end of her station, and gets/gets back to work.</p>
<hr/><p>He catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror out of the corner of his eye and when he turns (hops) to face himself entirely, what Tobio sees makes him choke on a mouthful of toothpaste. </p><p>“Kageyama, you okay?” Hinata raps on the door from outside in the hallway. “You didn’t fall in, did you?”</p><p>It’s a clumsy affair on one foot with a toothbrush still hanging out of his mouth, turning the knob to swing the door open and grabbing Hinata by the t-shirt in bunches; Hinata could probably stand to be more confused as Tobio points to his face, verbalizing something that was supposed to sound like “<em>face</em>” but sounded more like “<em>bwuh</em>”. </p><p>“Yeah, and?” he replies, getting an arm under Tobio so he doesn’t topple over in the time it takes to spit into the sink. “Haven’t you looked in the mirror at all in the last two days?”</p><p>The answer is no. Not for any real reason, it just hadn’t really struck him as a priority. Tobio had woken up a two-and-a-half, which is not a real tempo but is decidedly more himself than he remembers being yesterday and the day before. He’s still going to the bathroom, sitting in his bedroom, moving between both with all the lights off. Not really one to spend too much time checking himself in a mirror anyway, he’d been more suspicious that today really might be the best he’s felt since Sunday than he had curious about the state of his appearance, which altogether means that Tobio missed the plum bloom of a fat, ugly bruise crawling up the left side of his face. </p><p>“Kageyama, you smacked your head off the gymnasium floor. Like <em>plffbt</em>,” Hinata whispers into the mirror but then blows a raspberry to make his point. “I can’t believe you didn’t <em>feel</em> that thing any sooner! What did you think you looked like?”</p><p>Tobio lets go of Hinata, leaning close over the sink to see the splotches of skin healing yellow and green at the edges of the bruise when it hits him. “I didn’t think I would look so much like Sawamura-san,” he replies.</p><p>Hinata starts with a “<em>Sawa?</em>” and ends with a snort through the nose. “You’re right! Remember when—<em>Gwah! </em>He fell flat on his face first year! And we all thought he <em>died</em>! I almost forgot about that, I can’t believe you remember!”</p><p>The corners of Tobio’s mouth tug without his permission, even as he presses the pads of his fingers to his cheekbones to see if the bruise hurts (it does). He can’t believe it either, truthfully, (not that the bruise <em>hurts</em> hurts) that he remembers something as long ago as a Spring Interhigh, concussion or not. It's a distant memory, all wrapped in black and orange and much, well, smaller than he'd thought it to be at the time, but it’s good to have another thing Tobio knows that he knows, to have another small success after a morning of small successes. He didn’t wake up with a headache this morning. He’d kept his balance and kept his breakfast. He remembers Sunday morning and Saturday night and some summer afternoon playing volleyball in a high school tournament years ago. It’s not much, but it’s what he's collected so far, and like Hinata said, it's not like he's playing volleyball today.</p><p>"What numbers are we on?" Tobio asks.</p><p>"Remembering that Sawamura-san bounced his head off the floor like a volleyball once at the Spring Interhigh doesn't count as a competition," Hinata says.</p><p>He's right, of course; they'd technically decided, also sometime first year, that all of the parameters for their competitions had to be agreed upon before they happened, races being the exception that only required eye contact. "Someone sounds bitter," says Tobio.</p><p>"Ooh, look out, Kageyama's on to three-word sentences this morning!" Tobio watches Hinata roll his eyes through the glass of the mirror. "What number do you <em>remember</em> being on?" he provokes (or tries to), and Tobio takes him up on the challenge (or at least, thinks about it).</p><p>He's almost sure he doesn't know the answer to this one. At least not immediately, not off the top of his head. Tobio rinses off his toothbrush, deposits it in the cup by the sink, ignores the way Hinata watches him back, twice as scrutinous, right through the mirror as he buys himself enough time to play catch-up. </p><p>"I think," today's been good so far, and if anything, Tobio thinks he has it in himself to aim for one more good, right thing, "I think we were at 1,348, me, and 1,349, you." </p><p>Tobio's breath catches when Hinata shakes his head, but he finds he can breathe again pretty soon after, once he spots how wicked Hinata's whole face has curled. "Close, Kageyama, but I'm actually at 1,350."</p><p>"Are not!"</p><p>"Are too! We bet on who'd get the most service aces before the Netherlands match, and it was <em>me," </em>Hinata replies, smug and stupid, and again, technically correct.</p><p>He's right about this, too; Tobio still doesn't remember a great deal of the Netherlands match, a great black mass taking up space where the memories of his accident should've gone, plus everything before and after, but he does remember that while getting off the bus and going into Ariake Arena, Hinata bragged he was feeling extra good that Sunday. Maybe it was all their training coming to a head, maybe it was the good and soon-to-be empty feeling that you always want in your gut during a game, maybe it was just that they'd gotten as far as crushing Team USA—Tobio, naturally, had replied that he was feeling even better. And they'd decided on service aces as the measure of who would end up covering the other's tab for the team dinner they'd all go to at the end of the night, no matter what. He'd lost, obviously, but he'd also played one less set. When Tobio points this out, he doesn't necessarily intend to pout. </p><p>"You played more than I did."</p><p>"That’s not my fault! Maybe you just shouldn't get hurt next time!”</p><p>“It’s not like I tried to get injured!”</p><p>"It's okay, Kageyama-kun, I won't even hold you to your loss until you can pee on two feet again. Maybe we can count that as a point too!” Tobio's eyes roll back into his head when Hinata pats him on the shoulder. “But for now, <em>I’m</em> in the lead.”</p><p>When Tobio pokes the bruise again and winces when he finds that it still hurts, Hinata shakes his head and smacks Tobio's hand away from his face. When Hinata asks if he can take a picture of the bruise and send it to their friends from Karasuno, Tobio pushes him out of the bathroom.</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “Kageyama-senshu, this is Yamada-sensei’s office in Saint Luke’s Memorial’s Department of Orthopedics, calling with the results of your MRI. Please call back when you get the chance, thank you, and have a pleasant day.”</p>
<hr/><p>When Iwaizumi says he’s going to do something, more often than not, he’ll do exactly what he says he will and then a little bit more. So, when he gets a hold of Hinata to say he’ll take a detour to Tobio’s apartment on his way home from work at the National Training Center on Tuesday afternoon, it’s to no one’s surprise that he not only arrives five minutes early but brings a heavy gift bag and also Oikawa. </p><p>“<em>Oikawa-san!</em>” Hinata sounds ecstatic and loud, voice reverberating down the bright, sunny hallway, to carry at a comfortable volume into Tobio’s blacked-out bedroom even as he walks away. Taking the phone from Iwaizumi to continue the Facetime call from wherever it is that he’ll decide to pace as he chats (maybe out on the balcony he likes so much), his footsteps and his voice still sound like he’s right outside Tobio’s bedroom door. “Congrats on Argentina’s qualification! How is? Vancouver?”</p><p>“Rainy and expensive!” Oikawa's voice is tinny through the phone which, like Hinata, must also be at full volume, if not yelling. “Look at what’s been done to my hair by this weather, Shouyou. Do you know how hard it was to convince any bartender to give the guys free celebratory drinks with hair like this?”</p><p>“But you did manage, Oikawa-san?”</p><p>“<em>Did I?</em> Shouyou, if I can get the national team back on track after two lost sets to Team China, I can do anything, first of all.” Tobio bristles at the noise and it isn’t even a concussion thing. He feels fine right now, this is just who they are when they’re in proximity, as he’s learned: Hinata and Oikawa, Loud. “Second of all, congratulations are in order on my end as well, I hear all of you in Iwa-chan’s little boy band had a pretty successful weekend too...”</p><p>All this to say, when he hears Hinata step onto the balcony and launch into a gleeful retelling of their victories at the Olympic qualifiers starting with his very first serve of their very first match Tobio suspects that Oikawa may be acting as a distraction of some kind. He watches Iwaizumi watch them go from the hallway, and when he waits until Hinata slides the glass door shut to come in and close the bedroom door behind him, leaving them both in darkness, Tobio understands that he’s been cornered.</p><p>“I tried reaching out to you first, but once I realized you probably weren’t looking at your phone a whole lot, I figured Hinata was my best bet.” Iwaizumi keeps his voice low and warm as he pulls up the wooden chair Hinata had left in the corner. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his uniform, so he smells like Salon Pas and the Ajinomoto Training Center; Team Japan, as always, is sewn to his left breast. “You seem alert. You’re taking it easy, right? Getting enough rest? Keeping your knee on ice?”</p><p>Tobio checks again on his knee to find that it's still elevated and numb after another round of icepacks. He doesn’t think too long about whether kicking Hinata in the balls counts as taking it easy before he looks back to Iwaizumi and nods.</p><p>“It hurt much?”</p><p>“It’s uncomfortable, but okay with the pills.”</p><p>“And your head?”</p><p>“On and off, but today wasn’t as bad.”</p><p>“Good,” Iwaizumi says this in a way that makes Tobio feel like he accomplished something, personally; it's the kind of thing that makes Iwaizumi well-liked by the National Team. “So, first things first, I’m sure Hoshiumi or Miya already ruined the surprise, but...” Tobio watches as Iwaizumi lifts the gift bag, its contents heavy enough to round out the bottom of the red plastic, and set it on the side of the bed within arm’s reach. “The guys on the National Team wanted me to make sure you got their care package.”</p><p>Tobio blinks, tugging the sparkly rope handle, and thus the gift, closer. Looking inside is like looking at what would happen if someone took their arms to the aisles at the local convenience store, swept everything in the shelves into a gift bag, and topped it off with tissue paper. And as professional volleyball players, many of the National Team members have long arms; two bags of Kappa Ebisen and a gift card, maybe two, to Onigiri Miya and a bottle of supermarket wine. Facemasks and a copy of this week's <em>Shonen Jump</em>, a few fistfuls of chocolates and cheap pink slippers and microwave popcorn, not to count out Tobio's favorite prize: not necessarily the sparkly card with a kitten on the front (he's not ready to try reading the chicken scratch prattling well-wishes), but the curry advert he'd posed for tucked inside, maybe clipped from a newspaper or something, except with a mustache drawn over his face. Altogether, it’s enough to make something bloom heavy in his chest; Tobio slowly sets the bag on his bedside table, and when it threatens to fall over, he lowers it onto the carpet. “Thank you,” he says, somehow softer.</p><p>“I also brought you something, but it’s not half as exciting as Miya’s brother’s onigiri, I’d think,” says Iwaizumi as he reaches into his own backpack, fumbling with its contents before handing Tobio a thin plastic shopping bag, folded over to wrap the contents like gift paper. The convenience store logo crumbles in Tobio's grip when he opens the parcel and finds, with little ceremony, something even heavier than the gift bag.</p><p>“A knee brace?” Tobio asks, though not so much a question really—the model on the front of the box that lays limp in his lap, wearing the product on his knee with a thumbs up, provides an answer well enough. It is, in fact, a knee brace. For his knee, he could assume.</p><p>Iwaizumi gives a curt nod. “The hospital is going to try to give you their default brand. It’s crap, this one’s much better. Does the best job of keeping everything comfortably packed in tight.”</p><p>That’s good, too. But it’s a different good; there are the chocolates and wine, the pink slippers, the curry advertisement that are good for fun and then there’s the knee brace that's good at its job because it, at the end of it all, it has a real job it is intended to do. </p><p>“I have to admit, though,” Iwaizumi continues, the corners of his mouth winding up as he crosses his arms with a huff, “it was Oikawa who insisted upon making this recommendation, not me.” </p><p>Iwaizumi doesn’t laugh at Tobio and whatever face he’s making when he just about short-circuits again—<em>Oikawa? Oikawa. O i k a w a?</em>—but he does let himself grin fully. “I know, <em>I know</em>. I wouldn’t have brought it if he was doing it to mock you. I think this is out of the goodness of his heart, which is worse, objectively.”</p><p>The spasm of Tobio’s fingers that make him splay and grip his top quilt in irregular patterns eventually subsides long enough for him to force out a polite “Thanks. But…” But. Tobio might’ve been feeling okay today, right now, but he’s still injured. The National Team knows he’s injured and got him a gift bag with food coupons and things he usually doesn’t eat during the season. <em>Oikawa</em> knows he’s injured and recommended a knee brace for him. Iwaizumi is here because it’s his job as an athletic trainer and he should be, but the presents he brought with him are the sorts of things that get sent between teammates when one of them—Tobio stops there, choosing instead to croak, “This all means whatever you have to say next can’t be any good.”</p><p>Iwaizumi doesn’t sigh, really, when he's exasperated. Tobio watched him deal with Oikawa in middle school, then the Japanese National Team for years after that, and he’s not one to show dejection or surrender when he could just fold his arms and say what he means, square and honest. It makes Iwaizumi easy to understand and trustworthy and well-liked, at least by Tobio. And so when he does sigh—broad, strong shoulders rising and deflating to look smaller, especially so in the dark—it means something.</p><p>“I’m here as your trainer first, friend second, today.” But a weaker person would say this like he has something to admit, and muted as he is, Iwaizumi remains honest. “It isn’t ideal for you to be making big decisions that consider a lot of information this soon after your concussion, but it’s unavoidable when we also have your knee to think about. As your trainer, it’s my responsibility to make sure you understand your prognosis and recommended course of treatment, but it will be up to you to decide what’s good news and what’s bad news, alright?”</p><p>Tobio sits up, discarding the knee brace to the side as well, his heart but an inch closer to his gut. The feeling he’d had today, that maybe today would be better, is fading under the heavy knowledge Tobio somehow has of what's to come next. “Got it.”</p><p>“Do you remember what happened over the weekend?”</p><p>The short answer? No. The black mass remains. He doesn’t really remember what happened to him at all, just what he’s been told. “Ran off-court to make an emergency set, and I jumped,” even though he knows what Iwaizumi is really asking, all of what Tobio replies with feels foreign, an echo of what he heard at the hospital, from his sister, from Hinata, “and fell in a weird way, over the barriers? My knee made a <em> pop </em>?”</p><p>“I mean, I thought it was more of a <em> ssnkt </em> personally,” Iwaizumi says, with a shrug; Tobio thinks the distinction makes a great deal of sense.</p><p>“Because I tore my ACL.” </p><p>“Right." This time, instead of anything like an accomplishment, Iwaizumi's affirmation feels more like a warning that something's coming. "Now, I’m sure you’ve worked with plenty of other athletes who’ve gone through this kinda thing over the years. It’s not an unusual injury, but the primary treatment will require surgery to reconstruct the tear with a graft—"</p><p>Unlike the MRI and the CT scan, Tobio’s had surgery before, only just to get his wisdom teeth removed, over winter break one year in high school. It’d technically gone well, he thinks, though not unlike his current state, he’d slept through most of the days following the procedure. He doesn’t remember most of it, other than the taste of saline swishing around in the back of his mouth and asking the first person who'd checked on him if he'd died. He also doesn't seem to remember who the first person to check on him would have been; this is what Tobio is thinking about when he comes back around and realizes Iwaizumi is still in the middle of some kind of important medical explanation.</p><p>“—you are going to get a phone call about that today, if you haven’t already, from the orthopedic surgeon at Saint Luke’s to schedule a pre-surgery appointment and a surgery date—”</p><p>“What happens if I don’t?” Tobio doesn't mean to cut Iwaizumi off. He's not trying to be rude either, it's just that this part is the important part; less about the taste of the saline and more about how long he needs to wash with saline for and what happens if he doesn’t follow through. "If I don't get the surgery, I mean."</p><p>Iwaizumi doesn’t so much as blink at the interruption. “Good question,” he hums. “You know that feeling you’ve probably had the last few days when you go to stand up?”</p><p>“The buckling.”</p><p>“That won’t go away,” Iwaizumi states, flat. “You definitely got enough of a tear that leaving it to heal on it’s own won’t get you back anywhere near the activity level you’re used to.”</p><p>Tobio nods, eyeing his knee where it’s elevated and otherwise unable to straighten out. His heart still hangs that much lower to his gut, but he knew—it's not as though he didn’t see this coming. “So I need the surgery.”</p><p>“Again, I can only recommend it for your long-term health. Knowing you and what you’ve probably gotten used to as an athlete, I think it’d be more of a risk to not get the surgery done and torture you with taking it easy for the rest of your life.” Goosebumps prickle on Tobio’s arms. <em> No way </em> , he thinks, <em> wrong. </em> “After the procedure, it’ll be two weeks to control inflammation. Then, we can start physical therapy about the first week and a half or so, and you’ll be able to begin building up strength again after about the first month, but the earliest that I or anyone else on the team will be able to clear you for play is six months, post-op—”</p><p>“—so no Italian League,” Tobio says without inquiry, on behalf of the question he'd asked the white walls and red lasers of the CT scanner.</p><p>“I expect your manager will have more information for you, but no, certainly not.” His intuitions about the League season, the ones that’d hung over Tobio’s head since Sunday, get cut by this confirmation and drop, much lighter, to the floor. No Italy, no season. “I gotta say,” Iwaizumi continues, the few moments of silence to pad the fall passed now. “I’m pretty relieved this isn’t news to you."</p><p>Tobio tilts his head.</p><p>"I was afraid you’d be crushed.”</p><p>Iwaizumi is a really nice person, Tobio thinks, but between the proximity of his heart to his gut, the chills up and down his arms, the heaviness of the knee brace weighing him to the bed, Tobio could (would?) say he is crushed, at least a little. A lot will have to change in the next few months in order to find the routine he’d need to recover best. And a lot of the things he relies on to feel normal, that he plans his day around when his knee is working properly, will just have to go. No knee means no running, no gym, and definitely no volleyball. All of these things will be saved, will be packed up to collect dust while waiting for a later without even mentioning how the Italian League is amongst the best in the world, Ali Roma a club that routinely medals at global championships. Switching a volleyball training regimen for a recovery plan is daunting on it’s own, but no Italy means no Italian food, no sun-baked cobblestones or strangers who complain to him in all the Italian words he doesn't know in the middle of the street without prompt—Rome’s been Tobio’s second home for a few years now, and disappointing things are disappointing. Tobio <em> is </em> crushed, of course he is, but what keeps him leveled is exactly what he tells Iwaizumi:</p><p>“It’ll be okay, I can miss one season for this. It’s only six months.” He’ll have to do some extra work once his knee’s back to normal just to catch up with the shape the rest of his National Team teammates will be in coming into Paris after a full season of work under their belts, but surely he’ll be able to make time—</p><p>It’s only out of the corner of his eye does he notice that Iwaizumi's expression is tight and narrow and pointed, but his eyebrows bow in the same arc as his frown. He almost looks? Sad? Tobio doesn't know what to do or say to this. It's like the immediate second after he'd reached into the gift bag and rather than touch the plush of the slippers, something had bitten him instead. </p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] "Tobio, it's your father. Please call back when you get the chance, your mother wants to hear that you're alright."</p>
<hr/><p>Iwaizumi sighs again.</p><p>"Kageyama," he starts slowly, harder to read. "I was asked to watch how much I disclose to you at one time, as your trainer, before I came here today."</p><p>Tobio's head swims, treds long enough to put two and two together.</p><p>"But as your <em>friend</em>, off the record," Iwaizumi continues, "I would explain a few more things to you, about your current status and eventual outcomes, so long as you aren't getting tired."</p><p>"Why?" Why what? Tobio's not sure what he's asking. Why the mystery? Tobio's also not sure if he's tired because Iwaizumi suggested he might be or if he'd been tired this whole time and had simply forgotten until Iwaizumi said anything. He blinks, tries to think and be more specific, but can only ask again:"Why?"</p><p>"Because I can tell you don't really remember what happened on Sunday and that you're just repeating what you've been told." Iwaizumi doesn't flinch when he says this. "In which case, whatever I tell you now will just be explained to you at your two-week follow-up with the neurologist. I'm asking if you want to know now."</p><p>"I want—"</p><p>"Don't answer immediately. Think about it first."</p><p>Other than the cool blowing in from the air-conditioning unit and the distant buzz of the hallway light, everything goes quiet. The last day or two let Tobio get away with forgetting the world is wider than his apartment. Tobio wonders who swore Iwaizumi to secrecy like this and who the neurologist he'll meet in two weeks is supposed to be. Injuries are usually outside of Hibarida-san's expertise, same with Uchida-san. It's probably a different doctor than the one who'd checked his knee, and Tobio doesn't remember his name anyway. Maybe it's the technician with cat scrubs—</p><p>“I want to know all of it,” he says as easy and quickly as an exhale, then, with a little more consideration, adds “don’t hold back.”</p><p>Iwaizumi nods.</p><p>“I think, given what I know about you and your health, you will have a successful ACL surgery and recovery,” is where Iwaizumi begins, stern, like he didn't just give what Tobio thinks is good news. “If it was just the ACL holding you back, I would say if all goes well, this time next year, the next six months of recovery will be a funny memory. But, as you were probably told, you didn’t just tear your ACL on Sunday.”</p><p>“No, I didn’t, I also hit my head,” Tobio says.</p><p>“You hit your head <em>again</em>, yes.”</p><p>“Again?”</p><p>“Again.”</p><p>“But I thought,” any additional words for how he feels get caught in his throat. Thought what? Where’s the list, where did hitting his head for a second (first?) time fit between cutting his hair and the CT scan? “Just when I fell?”</p><p>“Do you remember any other part of the tournament?” Iwaizumi asks.</p><p>A simple enough question, begging a simple enough answer. “Yeah, I just—” But what comes to him as an afterthought is ultimately what happened: earlier in the weekend, in warm-ups before the match against South Korea, Tobio had taken a stray receive to the back of the head. Inubousaki had been nothing but apologetic, but it’s not like it was a big deal—“it’s okay, happens all the time” is what he’d said then, even as Iwaizumi checked his eyes and made him sit out the match in favor of Atsumu leading Team B to the win. He’d meant it, too. Sure, it’d mean a slower start to the tournament than he’d warmed up for, but the team was in good hands with Atsumu, and it was important to take the appropriate steps to stay safe. Tobio had always taken the appropriate steps to keep himself in shape.</p><p>“That happens all the time,” the Tobio of the present echoes, much less okay. “That’s happened to me a thousand times?”</p><p>“And that’s where the problem tends to be, in this sport. A thousand times is a lot of times to get hit in the head," the Iwaizumi of the present corrects, still a trace closer to the athletic trainer than the senpai. Tobio hears everything that Iwaizumi says next in slow-motion, five seconds behind, just like the screens hanging overhead in the arena. "And concussions are sneaky. Everyone’s symptoms are different, but I suspect the hit you suffered on Saturday, even when it really looked like nothing at the time, is what made Sunday’s that much worse. You're doing well today, that's great, but there’s no telling what the next few months—” next few <em>months</em> “maybe a year—” maybe a <em>year</em> “—might look like for you. We really have to watch closely, monitor any changes you experience, and see.”</p><p>“Yes, but that doesn’t—that can’t mean anything, can it?” Tobio's timeline lands as good as a smack to the bruised side of his face and because all of the points he'd logged as places he'd been and things he'd done had to connect to one another somehow. The MRI isn’t disconnected from the ACL tear, Miwa’s ponytail isn’t disconnected from watching her brother get knocked out, the sun isn’t disconnected from the Headaches. He’d hit his head Saturday, and felt fine until he hadn’t, mid-air and watching the grid snap and falling into something worse. Much worse. "Two weeks out, that's when I should be feeling better?"</p><p>"Kageyama, you were out for twelve seconds." Iwaizumi stops. "A <em>long</em> twelve seconds. I timed it."</p><p>“But that's not? I’ll be able to keep playing, right? Ali Roma is off the table for next season, but after that? What about Paris? I’m not being—”</p><p>Benched (permanently).</p><p>Instead of simply affirming or denying Tobio’s apprehension, Iwaizumi frowns and says something Tobio fears more. “I don’t know. I really don’t know, Kageyama.” </p><p>The timeline hits him again, another five-second delay. “But I did everything right,” Tobio spits, only to wince at how he sounds. Desperate. Sad.</p><p>Iwaizumi doesn’t reach out to touch him, hold his hand or hand him a tissue, but his response is still immediate, still assured. “That’s true, Kageyama. You didn’t do anything wrong.” But. There’s always a but. “But accidents still happen, even to strong, informed athletes.”</p><p>The full-body exhaustion comes on faster than anything else and it’s not enough to make him feel nauseous but to make him feel absent. Absent from all the things that’d made his body his, that he’d kept up with to maintain himself for years. They weren’t meaningless, not any of them, at least not until right now. But. But.</p><p>“Kageyama, talk to me,” Iwaizumi says. Tobio doesn't know how long he's kept him waiting as he's tried to catch up.</p><p>"I don't understand what I'm supposed to do, now," he admits. What to plan for, what to work for, what to wake up for, is what he means. "What am I supposed to do if I don't?" But that's the end of the sentence, for him. He can't/can't finish it on both ends. Can't convey what he means, even if he tries, and wouldn't want to, even if he could. "Don't"—don't what?</p><p>Iwaizumi waits. Tobio takes a long, deep breath to steady himself.</p><p>"What would you tell someone else with my injuries," he asks; he's white-knuckling his quilt again, this time with no release, "to do next?"</p><p>“Not to give up hope yet, first of all," Iwaizumi says right away, and then mulls it over a bit on his own, before he continues with, "and second of all, I would tell them about Asada Mao's career.”</p><p>Tobio blinks. Once, and then again, when it finally comes to him. “She's a figure skater?”</p><p>“Yes."</p><p>"I, um. Don't know anything about her."</p><p>"That's okay, I can catch you up," Iwaizumi says, almost happy to do so, when Tobio says nothing else about it. “Asada had been a young prodigy—Olympic silver medalist, world champion, you name it, she'd won it at least once. Then she announced her retirement five months after a career-worst finish at Nationals, a title she’d claimed before almost half a dozen times. When she held a press conference to publicly discuss her decision to move on from sport, she said it was because she’d lost motivation and the competitive will she’d shown at the best moments of her 21-year career."</p><p>Tobio might throw up. His stomach is empty and he might still throw up. </p><p>"And instead of talking about the knee injury that’d plagued her last two seasons or the lost medals that’d made her quit, she did what I hope you’ll get to do: Asada talked about her gratitude for the people who supported her over the many mountains and the times, not when she won, but when she did everything right. Vancouver 2010. Even Sochi 2014.”</p><p>“What happened in 2014?” Tobio asks.</p><p>“She’d fell on her triple axel and doubled her triple flip in her Olympic short program, then skated the greatest free program of her career and went from 16th to 6<sup>th</sup> place,” Iwaizumi replies, flatly, simply, like Tobio should naturally know what every word in that explanation meant.</p><p>“What I’m saying here, Kageyama,” Iwaizumi proceeds, as Tobio blinks through 'doubled her triple flip' again and again, “is that for the first time in your life, you’re going to have enough time to think about what your volleyball career meant to you—not your team, not the federation, not the rest of the country—and how you want to remember it when you move on.”</p><p>A part of Kageyama is wondering where Iwaizumi-san learned this much about figure skating. Another part of him caught Iwaizumi's words as they happened. “What your volleyball career <em>meant</em> to you." Meant. Not Means.</p><p>“What do you mean?” Tobio asks, and he’s riddled once again with the knowledge of what’s sure to come next. “Don’t hold back.”</p><p>Honest as ever, Iwaizumi sizes him up, looks Tobio dead in the eye, and asks, “Kageyama, if today was the day you had to stop playing volleyball, what would you do?”<br/>
<br/>
It’s his first year playing at Karasuno. They’re up against Shiratorizawa when Tendou, who Tobio now knows to be a nice and interesting person, is really leaning into the whole “Monster” part of his “Guess Monster” persona.</p><p>“Is the exhausted setter going to have to face the deuce of despair?” he’d asked Tobio, upside down, on one foot, prophetic or psychic or whatever it means to call a future member of the press’s “Monster Generation” a ‘monster’ three years before he’d even join the V-League.</p><p>“The only time I will ever feel despair is when I won’t be able to play volleyball anymore,” had been his reply at the time, and while it was mostly just to show his teeth with no real intent to bite back, he’d said exactly what he meant, not a syllable spared. </p><p>“I don’t know what’s going to happen to your career," Iwaizumi says, here in the present. "I can’t know—no one can. That’s why we’ll have to keep tabs on your progress and see how you adjust. You'll need the time. I think it’s good to be optimistic and ignore whatever media outlet thinks they have something to say and things like that, but I was there on Sunday, and I’m looking at you right now." Tobio's self-conscious, suddenly, about his bruise, about the times where he knows he's not listening and can't bring himself back down, about the words he forgets to say. "At the very least, you’re going to have a lot of time to ignore all the advice everyone’s ever told you about not looking beyond the next hurdle and consider what it is you’re going to do in the instance that you’re not cleared to return to play.”</p><p>There's less for him to do here, in his room, than in the bathroom when he tries to play catch-up this time. He can't do anything with the knee brace for another few months, he can't shift through the gift bag for anything he missed while it's on the floor. He can only sit and take it and exhaust himself thinking over everything he remembers being told and nod. Tobio nods.</p><p>“So, I'm not playing volleyball tomorrow either."</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Did you bring Oikawa as a distraction?" Tobio asks, suddenly.</p><p>"Again, what?"</p><p>"You brought Oikawa and waited until Hinata left with him to tell me all of this. Is there a reason why?"</p><p>“That obvious, huh?" Iwaizumi says, half a laugh coming up his throat and amusement releases what had kept his face tight. "I didn't set out to do that, at first. Oikawa called because he’s an old man who leaves team celebrations after one drink to relive the entire match over the phone and crash before midnight if he can help it. I wound up keeping him on as a distraction because I knew Hinata was going to be here.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Well, you’re a setter, and all setters think the same under pressure,” Iwaizumi’s warm expression turns wry. “When something goes wrong, you look towards your team and decide who you’re gonna trust to make the next move. Oikawa has to tell me all of his game time decisions were the right ones, I’ve watched Miya call his twin and defend the same thing. With everything you have going on at the moment, I wanted to give you more time to process the situation on your own before you start looking for your ace."</p><p>This time, Tobio sighs.</p><p>"You have a lot more time than half a second to figure out what makes the most sense for you next, Kageyama. Starting with that knee.”</p><p>Another pause. "I understand."</p><p>So loud, like thunder and lightning, Tobio hears the glass door slide open and Hinata step (stomp) back into the apartment, wrapping up his conversation (shouting match) with Oikawa. As the sound grows closer and closer, Iwaizumi stands, throws his backpack over his shoulder, and drags the chair he'd been sitting in back to its new home in the corner of Tobio's room.</p><p>“You have me as a resource. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about anything. I mean it," he says, reaching out to shake Tobio's hand.</p><p>“Yeah," Tobio thinks he says, all his attention focused on getting his arm up, his hand extended. "Of course." He's weak.</p><p>When Iwaizumi opens the door to the hallway, the light is twice as bright.</p><p>“How’s it going out here?” he asks Hinata and the phone he holds up, screen out.</p><p>"Fine!" Hinata replies.</p><p>“Just fine! Are you done waxing poetic about your girlfriend, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa asks, curly and mocking.</p><p>"<em>Stop that</em>."</p><p>“Girlfriend?” Hinata gawks up at Iwaizumi, who shakes his head with spite.</p><p>“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he deadpans.</p><p>“<em>Ah-ah-ah</em>, what about Mao-chan, huh? Shouyou, Iwa-chan’s been in a tumultuous love affair for years—"</p><p>Hinata couldn't be more enthused at this news. “Mao-chan? Like <em>the </em>Mao-chan?”</p><p>“He’s lying, Hinata, we’ve never even met—"</p><p>“—he stayed up all night just to watch her skate at Four Continents our second year, was super late to homeroom—"</p><p>“Don’t listen to anything he says—"</p><p>“—even I’ve always been second fiddle to—”</p><p>Iwaizumi reaches out and clicks off the Facetime call with a swift press of the red button. “That’s enough of that, I think.”</p><p>Hinata goes to hand him the phone, returning it to its rightful owner, but seems to falter halfway. “Ah, he’s already calling back, Iwaizumi-san,” he grins. </p><p>Iwaizumi, swift and stern, takes the phone and taps the red button again, twice as hard. “It’s good to see you both," he nods to Hinata before turning towards the doorway into Tobio's room. "Kageyama, you’ll think about what I said?”</p><p>Tobio might’ve nodded in response. He’s not so sure. And then Iwaizumi leaves much like he came, having done much more than he intended to.</p><p>"That was fun," Hinata says, whispering, once he's seen Iwaizumi out, “You good?”</p><p>"Yeah," Tobio replies, staring at the white ceiling. He's a little cold, actually, now that he's thinking about it.</p><p>"You look like you're gonna be sick. Are you sure you don't need anything?"</p><p>"I just—" Tobio's really cold. He's freezing, really. He's already under blankets, maybe he needs a sweatshirt. Gloves or soup or something. Soup and pudding and saline. One of his parents stayed with him, after his wisdom teeth surgery, but he's forgotten which one. Tobio doesn't know what he needs, he doesn't know what he needs next. "I'm really tired."</p><p>"I'm sure! You guys talked for a while," Hinata smiles like he means it as he reaches for the handle, slowly pulling it closed until just his head and bright hair are visible behind the wood. "I'll be out in the main room, if you want anything?"</p><p>It takes all of his remaining energy to shake his head, but he does, and so Hinata shuts the door, leaving Tobio alone in the darkness.</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “Kageyama Tobio, this is Ushijima Wakatoshi. It has been a few weeks since we last spoke. I witnessed your injury at the most recent Olympic Qualifier and wanted to offer my support as you recover. My father had to retire from sport due to a similar incident, and I received much support from other retired athletes when I moved on from competitive volleyball, albeit under different circumstances. Their help was essential to my adjustment. Because you are still a good friend, and spent many years as a trustworthy teammate to me, I wanted to offer myself as a resource to you, too. Call any time, with any questions. Or just to talk, sometimes that helps too. I look forward to hearing from you soon."</p>
<hr/><p>Hoshiumi drops his tray on the table and only because it’s mostly empty does the clatter not disrupt the better part of the dining hall. He sits down with all the grace of a brick, narrowing his gaze and pursing his lips like he does when he’s on the court. The rest of the National Team—at least, their national team, amongst the many grabbing lunch in the Olympic Village dining hall—continue eating and conversing like nothing’s happening at all, but at this point, Tobio and Hoshiumi have spent a year playing together for the Adlers back in Tokyo, so the stark difference in how Hoshiumi had left the table (fine?) from how he returned (<em>game face</em>) is noticeable. Also, Tobio is seated directly across from Hoshiumi, and a stray romaine leaf had propelled from his tray after making impact to land on Tobio’s tray.</p><p>Before he or Ushijima can ask, Hoshiumi goes on to explain himself. </p><p>“Some giant American broke the soft-serve machine,” he says.</p><p>“Soft-serve ice cream is not in the diet plan,” Heiwajima replies dully a few seats over.</p><p>"It's frozen <em>yogurt</em>."</p><p>"Still not in the diet plan."</p><p>Hoshiumi ignores Heiwajima shaking his banana at him, eyes darting instead between Tobio and Ushijima, his true peers on both the Adlers and the National Team (unlike Heiwajima), where they’re sitting side by side on the opposite end of the long, cafeteria-style table. “He and his giant hands took the last of the chocolate-vanilla twist and then <em>all </em>the levers broke. There are staff people working on it now, but it won’t be done in time for me to get any before practice.”</p><p>“Perhaps it’s for the best, as the protein and complex carbohydrate content in ice cream isn’t anywhere near what someone of your size and energy level would need to get through a work out,” says Ushijima.</p><p>"<em>Yogurt</em>, Ushiwaka!"</p><p>Tobio looks at Hoshiumi’s plate. It’s fine on the basics—plain chicken over salad, miso soup, rice—but it’d be better if that wasn’t all Hoshiumi had eaten since he'd felt sick the day before, he thinks. Tobio knows Hoshiumi is normally picky and Hirugami-san compared him to a bird, once, which is how Tobio found out that birds actually eat very little, but it's more than that too. Hoshiumi had confided in Tobio that his current concern is that he’s always been particular about food outside of his staples, and in another country, another continent, all the way across the world, most of the foods are outside his staples. Tobio gets it. Not in the way that his appetite hasn’t been compared to a bottomless pit independent of what he’s eating, but the textures part and the trying new things part and the trying anything to feel satiated before working out part. Trying something new for lunch and then having to, say, figure out The Village’s shuttle system, are two things not conducive to the consistency they usually rely on as athletes.</p><p>Yet, tonight’s the Opening Ceremony, so Hoshiumi needs a solution soon. Tobio highly recommends the feijoada, or at least the farofa. </p><p>“I want a list of every tall man on the American team,” Hoshiumi announces, after some thought.</p><p>Tobio blinks. “All of them?”</p><p>“Pffft, good luck.” Heiwajima rips off another piece of banana and tosses it into his mouth. “It's not like the US is short on tall athletes."</p><p>Ushijima reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out his phone. “Should it exclude the basketball players, who are staying on a boat, and subsequently unlikely to use any facilities in the Olympic village?” he asks Hoshiumi.</p><p>Hoshiumi hums, tapping a finger to his chin. “That would make sense,” he decides.</p><p>And so Tobio watches the phone screen as Ushijima types something into his browser’s search bar—‘tall American Olympians’—and a Google-curated list of names rounds out the top, along with pictures of men and women smiling in their blue and red jackets.</p><p>“Do you have any more physical descriptors?” Ushijima asks, just to clarify.</p><p>“I dunno, he had brown hair, I think? And a face like—” Hoshiumi contorts his own face into a terrifying expression, crinkling his eyes at the corners and forcing a grimace that somehow, is still smiling “—and a Team USA jacket and he was <em>really</em> tall and that’s all I needed to know.”</p><p>It’s maybe just another few moments of scrolling past basketball players and physically trying to imitate all the smiles of all the athletes listed on Team USA’s website before Ushijima’s whole figure seems to perk up. “Is it this man?” he asks Hoshiumi as he holds out his phone.</p><p>Hoshiumi is squinting at the screen when recognition lights up his whole face twice over. “That’s him!” he nearly shouts, earning a chorus of shushes from older members of the National Team further down the table.</p><p>“Is that Michael Phelps?” Onigashira asks as he leans over Heiwajima to get a glimpse of the commotion.  </p><p>“Mica-who?” asks Hoshiumi.</p><p>“Michael Phelps?" Heiwajima clarifies, slow, in between bites of banana. "The winningest Olympic athlete of all time?”</p><p>“Never heard of him,” Hoshiumi says quickly before turning his attention back to Ushijima. “What does he play? Is he a middle blocker?”</p><p>Ushijima checks his phone screen again. “He appears to be a swimmer,” he states. "And 193 cm." Hoshiumi fumes at this.</p><p>“Have you really never heard of him?” Onigashira and Heiwajima, like Ushijima, Hoshiumi, and Tobio, are around the same age and thus get paired up for a great deal of National Team activities; they can usually be seen laughing between each other, although right now, Tobio definitely suspects that they are laughing at their juniors. “There are sports at the Olympic Games besides volleyball, you know?”</p><p>Tobio feels himself frown.</p><p>“Guys.”</p><p>Neither he nor Hoshiumi nor Ushijima say anything in acknowledgment. </p><p>“Guys, <em>seriously</em>.”</p><p>Getting Ushijima to give him a better look at the reference image, Tobio thinks he’s seen this face before. Maybe. At least once or twice? He’d spent a little, but not a lot of time watching swimming during London or Beijing or Athens, if he remembers correctly. He’d mostly watched volleyball—of course he had—and truthfully, his idea of variation was also watching beach volleyball, especially since that’s what Hinata had watched and latched onto in 2012, subsequently relaying all of his individual thoughts to Tobio over text. Tobio had had to watch just to keep up; the Germans' upset was pretty incredible, admittedly.</p><p>In 2016, Hinata’s still somewhere on the other side of town, and instead of watching beach, Tobio’s watching Hoshiumi decide to do something evil. “I bet this Mitchell Phipps guy thinks because he’s the winningest that he can just, take whatever soft serve he wants,” he says, hitting the table for emphasis; another romaine leaf flops off his plate. “Someone’s gotta tell him otherwise.”</p><p>“Kourai, <em>no</em>—”</p><p>“Are you really going to go pick a fight with Mi-mi—” Tobio checks the name on Ushijima’s phone, which Ushijima kindly holds up for him—if anything, his English is about as good as it was in 2012, which is to say, “Michal Phelp?”</p><p>“You wanna come with?” Tobio is nodding before he knows he’s nodding. This is exciting—er, a great way to support Hoshiumi, as his setter, in finding a norm in Rio that makes play comfortable and easy.</p><p>“Alright!” Hoshiumi exclaims, his eyes going wide—wider—before he turns onto Ushijima. “What about you? He’ll see you coming from a mile away and know I mean business!”</p><p>“I don’t believe in settling differences off the court,” Ushijima replies, firmly. </p><p>“But he doesn’t even play volleyball! How else are we supposed to settle our differences?”</p><p>That seems to make Ushiijma think a little more deeply about the matter. Tobio hopes he comes to the same conclusion that he already had: that Hoshiumi can be very intimidating when he wants to be without two guys who clear 180 cm flanking either side of him. Even if he doesn’t totally deck this American swimmer or anyone else, watching someone twice his height cower in fear of Hoshiumi and the power he holds would be? Fun, Tobio thinks, if nothing else.</p><p>“I suppose,” Ushijima starts slowly; Tobio and Hoshiumi both lean in on the edge of their seats. “You wouldn’t get another opportunity to communicate your dilemma otherwise.”</p><p>Hoshiumi points at Ushijima, a great wide grin blooming across his face, at about the same time Tobio pumps a fist, just under the table. “Great, then let’s go!”</p><p>“Eat first!” Heiwajima replies, though something malicious twinkles in his eyes. “And if you’re late for the bus to practice, I will personally make sure Coach doesn’t start any of you three for another Adlers match next season.”</p><p>Nothing if not diligently observant of orders and respectful of their elders, Tobio, Ushijima, and Hoshiumi finish their lunches in record time and at varying levels of consideration. Before long, it’s Hoshiumi who leads, tossing his tray in the garbage receptacle at the end of the table and taking off for the closest door, and without much deliberation or verbal confirmation, Ushijima follows, Tobio behind him. </p><p>They’ve only been in the Olympic Village for two days, but after spending the first sleeping off the jet lag and the second locating their facilities, it’s not until the day of the opening ceremonies does it really start to feel like they’re really staying in a community, breathing and lived in, now that all the athletes have arrived. Even just this afternoon, the sun hanging high and hot in the clearest of skies, they seem to trek half the globe in a few running steps. There's gymnasts half of Tobio’s height, lean and willowy runners, weightlifters made out of muscle, the multicolor spectrum of all their team jackets unending; blues and yellows, greens and reds, black and white to represent a little bit of home, however far away from home.</p><p>“There’s so many people,” Tobio thinks aloud.</p><p>“Why are there so many fucking people?” Hoshiumi shouts, seemingly to everyone in the immediate vicinity.</p><p>“Because we’re sharing a communal living space with all of the best athletes in the world,” Ushijima says. Tobio can't help but squint at him; he isn’t even breaking a sweat against Hoshiumi’s break-neck pace. “It’s part of what makes The Games different from other tournaments.”</p><p>“Good point, actually!" Hoshiumi takes a sudden corner around the McDonald's, Tobio and Ushijima skidding to match the change in direction. "What could be better than crushing the best volleyball players in the world?”</p><p>"Not just that. There's just nothing else like them, where getting to go at all is its own reward," Ushijima says, thoughtfully. "At least that's what my father told me." </p><p>"Did your dad tell you anything else?" Tobio asks.</p><p>"He told me to have fun, which is why I decided to join you and Hoshiumi-san," Ushijima says as Hoshiumi leads them around a fountain. "He'll be here before our first match, so I can ask if he has any more advice then, but mostly, he said to have fun, because it's the Olympics."</p><p>Between the tall buildings, the fountain, and the world in a city block, Tobio catches something out of the corner of his eye. It's not Miguel Prepps, it's the horizon that meets a bright blue ocean. This is where it hits him—he’s made it all the way to the <em>Olympics</em>.</p><p>"We're at the Olympics," he says.</p><p>"Yeah, Kageyama-kun, no shit, are you even looking for—"</p><p>"No, look—" Tobio grabs Hoshiumi and Ushijima each by their shirts as they roll to a stop, letting go to gesture vaguely between the buildings towards a set of rings—blue and yellow, black and green and red— erected in the sand by the beach, tall and distinctive and unmistakable. When the breeze hits him on the inhale, fresh air and something salty on his tongue, he feels his face nearly split. "We're at the Olympics."</p><p>Despite Tobio's enthusiasm, Ushijima and Hoshiumi, admittedly, look dumbfounded at first. But only at first—Hoshiumi gasps, hands flying to his hair when it hits him. "Oh, I — <em>ehhhh</em> —" he starts pacing, bouncing up and down and between his feet. "Shit, we're at the Olympics!"</p><p>Ushijima nods, as wide of a smile Tobio's ever seen on him, patting Hoshiumi on the shoulder before he really leaps and causes even more of a commotion. "Indeed. We made it to the Olympics."</p><p>
  <em>"Ahhh?"</em>
</p><p>"Right."</p><p>They stand there just to look around for a moment. Hoshiumi starts to pace a little and cackle more, frantic and weird, so weird that Tobio has to laugh too, inbetween wringing out his hands. Ushijima even offers a chuckle, bouncing this extraneous energy between the balls of his feet. The three of them take his Utsui-san's advice as they live in the moment, at least until Hoshiumi, like he usually only does on the court, locks on to something on the other side of the makeshift street.</p><p>“Look, that guy has an American flag on his jacket, let’s go ask him!” He points without consideration before taking off in a sprint towards a group of men standing outside a dorm building. “<em>Oi!</em>”</p><p>A very tall man, with brown hair and a wry mouth—but still someone different in appearance from Michal Prepps—turns around with brows furrowed. Hoshiumi starts shouting at him in Japanese as they make their approach, and when that doesn't get his attention, failing to register as a greeting for the athlete, Hoshiumi slows down and takes a deep breath.</p><p>He starts with tapping the man on the shoulder, mumbling a fast 'hello' and then, as slow and steady as the tapes in any high school English class, asks: “Did you break the soft-serve machine?”</p><p>The athlete turns his head, a blank look crossing his face. Tobio recognizes it as the same thing they do with the foreign players on the Adlers—he's looking for the couple phrases, words, sounds that he does recognize.</p><p>"Kageyama," Ushijima whispers with a sense of urgency, holding his phone up to Tobio's nose. "I don't know if this is the right man." </p><p>Tobio takes Ushijima's phone and holds it at a comfortable enough distance to focus and find that it's not. It's definitely not. The man Hoshiumi is throwing English words at, at the present moment, is almost certainly not the man in the picture, and not the man who broke the soft-serve machine. </p><p>"Excuse me, do you know where?" Tobio cuts off Hoshiumi, making sure the American man is watching him before he checks the phone screen again and sounds out the name: "Michael Phelps? Where?"</p><p>After a long "<em>Oooooooh"</em> , the clearest words Tobio picks up from the man, who altogether, seems understanding enough, are "sorry" and "never met". "Good luck finding him though!" he says, more clearly and with a friendly wave, soon departing with the rest of his group in the opposite direction towards the beach. They've grown pocket-sized with the gap and distance, and are nearly out of sight when Hoshiumi turns on his heel towards Tobio and Ushijima, more perplexed than anything. </p><p>"You know, I'm not saying I was like, killing the game or anything, but my marks in high school for English were pretty alright,” he admits.</p><p>"Mine as well," Ushijima replies. </p><p>Tobio chews on the inside of his cheek. "I had a good tutor," he says, and Hoshiumi laughs with his whole gut.</p><p>“Well, that’s okay!” he exclaims, altogether undeterred, facing the horizon with his hands on his hips. “We can just keep looking, he has to be around here some—”</p><p>Something vibrates then, in Tobio’s palm, on the rhythm with a twinkling harp and the sounds of birds chirping.</p><p>“Oh, I set an alarm to go off five minutes before our shuttle leaves,” says Ushijima, taking his phone back from Tobio and sliding the alarm off. “That way, we would not miss it and face Heiwajima-san’s ultimatum.”</p><p>“That was a good idea,” Tobio nods, but then he thinks about it a little longer. “Where’s the shuttle leaving from?”</p><p>Ushijima doesn’t say anything. Hoshiumi’s eyes go wide like the dining hall plates.</p><p>The three of them sprint back through the village so fast they might just take off and fly to practice instead, searching for a teammate, a sign, any bus at all. </p><p>“Wait, did you guys really go look for Michael Phelps?” After hearing of the ordeal during warm-ups and stretches, Heiwajima is laughing so hard he's crying. Onigashira had to walk away and grab a towel to wipe his tears, he’s laughing so hard. “You know he’s a big enough deal to like, stay at a big hotel with security instead of at the Olympic village, where eager youngsters can just come approach him willy-nilly?”</p><p>Tobio hadn’t really thought of it like that, but it makes sense. Nicollas Romero isn’t staying in the Olympic Village either, and he’s as big of a star as they have in volleyball.</p><p>“But I think in an interview, he decided not to stay in the Village because he lives in Rio and he just had a son,” Ushijima says; Tobio hums, he’d read that interview too.</p><p>Hoshiumi, on the other hand, is dribbling a volleyball just out of bounds, muttering something to himself. “Michael Phelps, huh.” Tobio watches him wind up and launch into what is a perfect display of perfect technique: a perfect toss, a perfect run-up into a perfect jump serve that flies into the exact corner of the opposite side of the court. “He really thinks he’s better than me, doesn’t he?”</p>
<hr/><p>As he was asked, Tobio thinks about the wisdom Iwaizumi imparted. </p><p>All he does, for every waking second, for the rest of the day, is think/think about what Iwaizumi told him.</p><p>His room is as dark as it’d been when he’d fallen asleep. He's warmed up plenty, save the goosebumps that won't go away and his nose, ice-cold from peaking out above the blankets for air. Tobio sits up, woozy and somehow sore, and takes account of his lukewarm ice pack and throbbing temples before he calls, however softly, “Hinata?”</p><p>(Alone.)</p><p>“Hinata,” Tobio tries again, loud enough to echo across the carpeted floor and bounce off the empty walls. This time, he hears some clattering, some movement, and the footsteps of someone much more relaxed and lithe.</p><p>When the light runs across the ceiling to push out the black with a pool of orange and yellow, Tobio can tell through his squinting that it’s Miwa leaning up against the doorway.</p><p>“Nope, just me. Hinata had to hit the road. He said he’d be back at some point to check on you before he ships out for the season,” she says through a mouth half-full, holding up a plastic container that smelled like it could’ve been appetizing. “I got us takeout.”</p><p>Tobio swallows, his throat tight. Hinata still has a season, that’s right. Hinata’s supposed to go back to Brazil in (something) weeks. (Something) days? (If it was just the ACL holding you back…)</p><p>“I’m not hungry,” Tobio says.</p><p>“Really? Are you okay?" </p><p>“Yes,” he lies. </p><p>(A thousand times is a lot of times to get hit in the head.)</p><p>“You want anything? Water? Phone?”</p><p>“Just water, no phone.” </p><p>“Okay,” Miwa doesn’t sound convinced, probably isn’t, but also might just be more interested in whatever spicy noodle combination she’s wrapping around her chopsticks at the moment. “Did Hinata tell you?”</p><p>(I was asked to watch how much I disclose to you at one time.)</p><p>Throat impossibly tighter, Tobio mutters a “Tell me what?”</p><p>“Mamorou-san and—” Miwa stops long enough to swallow whatever she’s eating; Tobio’s stomach flips, protests at the notion. “Dad and Mom are gonna be back in the country next week. They’re coming to see you.”</p><p>“Oh.” It’s not that he was really looking for new hints that something’s wrong, but Tobio’s old enough now to know his parents primarily appear ahead of good things and after bad things. Before Rio and Tokyo and (something), in the stands for his matches, after his wisdom teeth surgery, in the same room, in the other room, working from home. Before (something) and before (something), after his last middle school match, after Kazuyo. “It’s okay, if they don’t have time—"</p><p>“Shut it. It would not be okay, if they didn’t make time for this—"</p><p>“Nee-san.” He’s cutting people off again, and but can’t find the room to feel self-conscious about it this time, not when there’s something he wants to know: “When you decided you were going to drop out of college and do hair and make-up, what did you do next?”</p><p>“Googled a list of the top beauty schools in the country, applied to all of them, accepted the offer from the best one,” Miwa replies, with a shrug. He understands that he didn't ask what he really meant to ask. “Why?”</p><p>(Kageyama, if today was the day you had to stop playing volleyball, what would you do?)</p><p>“When someone goes to,” he tries again, “change careers, what do they do?”</p><p>The hall light behind her casts a shadow across Miwa’s face, but not enough of a shadow that he can’t watch one eyebrow pique, interested, if not suspicious. “This couldn’t <em>possibly</em> be about anyone we know?” she asks.</p><p>“No,” Tobio says quickly.</p><p>“Okay, well,” Miwa taps her chin. “A lot of people go back to school, if they know what they want to switch to. That’s what I did. Or they work odd jobs until they find something they do want to do. If the person was, say, an <em>athlete</em>,” she shrugs again, loaded, “then they might do what other athletes do and be a brand ambassador for one of their sponsors—” (If today was the day) “or be a motivational speaker—” ( you had to stop playing volleyball) “—write a book” (what would you do?) “—maybe model.” (What is he supposed to do now?)</p><p>When Tobio hasn’t answered for a while, Miwa looks for him. Drops her chopsticks in her plastic takeout container and waves a hand, snaps her fingers.</p><p>“I found out today I have a bruise on my face,” he says.</p><p>“Yeah, I know.”</p><p>“Why didn’t you tell me?”</p><p>“Because I knew if I did, it was going to be the only thing you thought about until you could get a good look at it yourself,” Miwa replies, simply. “It’s kind of a drop in the ocean, isn’t it? All things considered.”</p><p>(So I’m not playing volleyball tomorrow either.)</p><p>Every bird flying high above Tokyo does/does not land.</p>
<hr/><p>Answering questions from the kids after a few games is way more fun than answering questions from the press after a whole match, mostly because no one will make fun of him when he uses “<em>fwoom</em>” as an adjective. </p><p>The gymnasium full of Tokyo Youth League players, ages seven to fourteen, break into laughter as Shouyou vocalizes what it’s like to hear the speed of a service ace or a quick attack fly past his ears. They’re on the tail end of the funnest two hours this week’s press train has in store for the National Team in a competition that isn’t even close, and given he’s the only member who hasn’t had to sit through the endless one-on-one insiders/panel discussions/“20 questions while petting puppies”-type interviews, Shouyou doesn’t mind pulling all the weight and playing the clown. It’s for the kids, after all. And it’s his second Olympic cycle, so he already knows what’s required—the hours of footage they create this week will get turned into promotional content for the Olympic season while the players move on for their separate League seasons here or abroad, playing for the Jackals or the Adlers or the Falcons, in Brazil, in Russia, in Italy. Shouyou’s hitting the road (air? he’s flying to São Paulo, if that wasn’t clear) in two short weeks. He might as well give the media something to work with, give the rest of the guys a break.</p><p>Plus, the kids ask the <em>best</em> questions, only ever in wild extremes. A seven-year-old that’d been sending tosses from Aran’s shoulders about twenty minutes ago wants to know if Shouyou’s arms have ever been taken off making a receive (no, but it sure feels that way sometimes!). A fiery twelve-year-old who’d called out Atsumu for intentionally going light on his serves asks if there’s anything Shouyou has to do before a match for good luck (he always, always, always goes to the bathroom before he plays, but that’s not really a ‘luck’ thing). A ten-year-old who goes up to about the middle of Hoshiumi’s or Yaku’s gut wants to know about how tall the foreign players get (sometimes, they’re as tall as the tallest guys on the National Team, but most of the time, they’re giants). A fourteen-year-old who’d made a set that <em>the</em> Sakusa-senshu had scored a point with wants to know about the intensity of a tournament over a regular series game (what makes tournaments harder is the pacing—it’s very important to check in with your body and make sure it’s getting what it needs when there’s much less time to recover between matches).</p><p>How bright are the lights? (Very bright, but you get used to it after a while.)</p><p>How loud are the crowds? (Very loud, the louder the better!)</p><p>Do the players get into fights with the other teams in the back halls of the arena? (No comment.) (Just kidding! Of course not, sportsmanship is very important.)</p><p>What was it like crushing the Americans? (<em>Awesome</em>.)</p><p>“Hinata-senshu!” Calls one boy up front, maybe about nine years old or so, with hair like a nest and knobby knees; when Shouyou points to him to take his question next, he doesn’t smile, or beam, or squirm like the other kids do. He just asks very gravely and very seriously: “Is Kageyama-senshu ever going to play again?”</p><p>And it's like everyone stops breathing, all at once.</p><p>If there's a pair of eyes in the gymnasium, then they switch from simply watching to locking onto Shouyou, Kageyama little more than a target on his back, ready, aim, fire. The kids glare at him like they’re hungry. His teammates, who’d tip-toed around asking any similar questions before they’d started, are still and expectant. The staff members, who are probably up to date on the news and sick of the speculation and rumors, are curious, if not suspicious. And not unlike his peers, this Knobby Knees asks what he wants to know in extremes: will Kageyama <em>ever</em> play again? At all? And who better to ask, think all the people who want to know, than Kageyama’s partner? Some things don't ever really change. They just change shape and count higher, travel the world and make a name for themselves on a global stage, and then go and don't even come apart, even when separated. Knobby Knees probably doesn't know what that's like yet, to stay someone's anything through time and over continents, not when he looks like he's probably only been alive about as long as Kageyama's been playing professionally, which is quite a while for something to stay the same and then, suddenly, change.</p><p>It's for this reason that Shouyou doesn’t want to <em>lie</em>, but relaying what he's learned in the last two days scrolling through every Google search-generated source on concussions in the earliest hours of the morning and egging on Kageyama just to see if he can get a reaction probably isn't fair. He decides, instead, to meet Knobby Knees in the middle, and to answer in an equal extreme.</p><p>“Sure,” Shouyou replies with a smile; the kid audibly exhales, deflating in relief along with the rest of the gym. “One day, just as long as he takes the time to recover properly.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They were cleared to use the locker rooms to drop their stuff off before and clean up after the Q&amp;A, and so that’s where Shouyou’s body carries itself once they’re done. Though, he’s moving less to the locker room, more to his phone, unzipping his backpack’s smallest front pouch to dig for it between protein bar wrappers and spare change and pens.</p><p>He doesn’t know what he was anticipating so intently, but it wasn’t to click the phone’s home button once, twice, to greet only his reflection in the black mirror. Huh. Shouyou tries again, then again, before it really occurs to him that his phone is dead, and he must have forgotten to charge it. It takes a deep-dive, back through the smallest front pouch, then the medium-sized pouch, then the large, wide mouth of the main bag for it to sink in that he doesn’t have his charger either.</p><p>“Shouyou-kun!” Atsumu knocks him on one shoulder with his elbow, Hoshiumi claps him on the other, both dressed back down and ready to leave. “We all agreed to get noodles tonight, you coming?”</p><p>“Yeah, I-” Shouyou tries the home button of his phone one more time, just to make sure. “My phone’s dead.”</p><p>“You got a charger?” Hoshiumi asks, like it isn't the obvious next question.</p><p>“I usually do, but I must have left mine at Kageyama’s apartment,” replies Shouyou, imagining clearly in his mind’s eye the corner of Kageyama’s living room, between a standing lamp and nothing else, that his charger must have been plugged and abandoned in.</p><p>“Just borrow Aran’s and stop by Tobio-kun’s in the morning,” says Atsumu with a shrug. </p><p>Aran, appearing behind the three of them with only an ounce of humor, smacks Atsumu on the back of the head. “You know, I would’ve let Hinata borrow my charger anyway, but that’s because he would’ve <em>asked</em>—”</p><p>“Plus, it’s getting late and we don’t have anything to go to first thing tomorrow!” Hoshiumi adds, otherwise unperturbed by the roughhousing. "You'll have time to grab it in the morning!"</p><p>“Knowing Kageyama, he’s probably asleep right about now, anyway,” Aran says kindly, pointedly ignoring how Atsumu rubs the back of his head.</p><p>Shouyou's sure Aran is right, or at least, as right as he can be. Kageyama normally sleeps like he's dead as often as he’s allowed twenty minutes to do nothing but lay horizontal, but that’s usually a choice on his part, like flipping a light switch. When Shouyou'd spoke to Kageyama last, he really seemed exhausted, burnt out from doing nothing but lay in his bed and hold a conversation. His talk with Iwaizumi must’ve really taken something out of him, or so he thought at the time. It's not an uncommon symptom, Google said so.</p><p>Shouyou tries the home button just one more time, and makes another mediated decision. </p><p>“Aran-san, can I please borrow your charger? he asks; Aran obliges without even rolling his eyes in Atsumu’s direction, sliding his backpack off to fish through its pockets. “Where are we going?”</p><p>“Don’t remember,” Aran says. “Hoshiumi-kun got some promotional email from this diner a few blocks over.”</p><p>Sakusa, silent and deadly, appears at Shouyou's right as they round up some of the willing and able younger members of the team and move towards the exit and into the parking lot. “Did Atsumu mention that he’s paying—”</p><p>Atsumu makes some defeated sort of whine. “You know, I don’t know if we have to keep talkin’ about it—”</p><p>“—because of the way he embarrassed us all earlier in press?”</p><p>“Don’t worry, Hinata, it’ll probably be online tomorrow, you can catch up then,” Yaku says, heading up the back; he snorts when Atsumu scowls and zips his Team Japan jacket all the way up to his nose. "In the meantime, can we all step on it? I want to eat something spicy and bad for me as soon as possible."</p><p>It's not long before Shouyou's personally clocking in at about a three; these kinds of Izakayas make him warm and full, so much so that keeping his eyes open is a struggle. He's made a few more educated and informed decisions. He'll charge his phone but won't turn it on just to ignore his notifications and instead wait for some kind of update or fall down another Google rabbit hole. He will (he will!) answer all of his notifications tomorrow morning, early, and to stop by Kageyama's right after, to grab his charger, to drop off the key Miwa'd lent him, to check-in. Then press. Then Brazil. For now, he has time to eat his weight in gyoza and fall asleep drooling on the table tonight—it's not like he's playing volleyball tomorrow. </p>
<hr/><p>The conclusion he comes to comes in the form of something sloshing back and forth in his stomach. Tobio could pull it out and see it, hear it, maybe, if he could so much as open his mouth—</p><p>He’s on a fishing boat off the Amalfi Coast. Nishinoya said Tobio wasn’t allowed to come to Italy without seeing him and seeing him involved signing up for one of the fishing tours he was running weekdays, 8 to 6, from April until the end of the summer. It’s a rush and he should’ve known; the boat skips fast off the water, the cool breeze whips and licks past his ears and blows his bangs off his forehead, the salt stays too long in the back of his throat. But it’s all so beautiful, Italy is really beautiful. Two hours in, there’s an amberjack almost as big as Nishinoya himself writhing in Tobio’s arms, and he’s, he’s, he’s really, he’s <em>really</em>—“Holy shit, are you laughing? Kageyama, you sick, evil bastard!” Nishinoya woops and hollers, shaking his fists at Tobio with a grin so wide it must hurt. “We are eating good tonight!” Tobio’s face hurts from muscles less-used working so hard. The aquamarine glass of the water below is beautiful, the sky near setting is beautiful, this fish is fucking beautiful. He can’t help how he feels, and how he shows it in the quiver of his hands, the drum in his chest, in whatever is that’s bubbling up from his gut; Tobio opens his mouth and lets out the biggest, happiest—</p><p>He’s in an arena in Rio. He’s so nervous he can’t remember the name of the venue. Tobio wasn’t supposed to play this match, wasn’t really supposed to make the team this year either, but Team Japan is down a veteran setter and by four to Team France and they’re desperate, so Tobio serves. And Serves. And Serves. And Serves again. He feels like he’s shaking enough to fall apart but when he presses his fingertips together, they’re perfectly steady, the crowd screaming over an unprecedented four service aces in a row. Everyone in the arena is losing their mind. His teammates knew he could play like this and they’re still losing their fucking minds. France’s Number 5 looks like he wants Tobio dead. Tobio might die. He might fly away. Instead of doing either, he launches into his fifth serve, his palm crossing paths with a meteor for just a moment, and when it makes contact with the earth on the other side of the court, in bounds, he opens his mouth and lets out the most victorious—</p><p>He’s in the Karasuno gym. He didn’t just lose to Oikawa, they lost to Aoba Johsai yesterday. When he’d forgotten it happened long enough to sit up at his desk he’d immediately been confronted with the Interhigh bracket he’d been using as a pillow, drool dribbled over the lines. He feels stupid. Tobio feels so stupid he doesn’t know where to start, and so he started with hitting a ball against the wall in the gym, over and over, until whatever he forfeited in his last toss of the match comes back. Except it doesn’t, and now Hinata’s running, kicking and screaming across the wooden floor like something wild and it’s too much. The sound is too much. There’s too many balls in the fucking cart and so Tobio’s feet propel him to anywhere but the point where he’s stuck standing and listening to too much and he lets out a frustrated—</p><p>He’s in his Kitagawa Daiichi uniform, number two. He’s the only one on this side of the court, this side being the side of the split between him and the rest of his faceless teammates and their backs. People are in the stands but they aren’t watching him. His parents are in the stands, but they’re turned around. The wooden boards of the gymnasium floor are broken and busted and he smells, tastes something salty. It comes up before he can stop it, his mouth wrenched open before he could get a hand up to catch what isn’t vomit. It’s water, water that spews between his fingers and he’s choking, drowning. He’s so horrified by the waterfall pouring out between his teeth that he doesn’t even notice how the floor cracks and snaps under his feet until he's falling, still choking, still drowning. Just before he hits the waves below, he thinks of a net—no, a grid—here, that could catch him. If he could call for the grid, it would catch him, but instead of words there’s more water, and he plunges into the black pool, creek, ocean running rampant under the gym floor. Maybe he could kick to the surface if his knee hadn’t been ruined and the crown wrapped tight around his head was not made of cement, but it’s all he can do to keep his eyes open long enough to watch the wooden boards of the court rebuild themselves, taking the light with them. Tobio’s limp before the final board is laid and he sinks, sinks, sinks far into the dark depths below.</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “Kageyama-senshu, this is Yamada-sensei’s office in Saint Luke’s Memorial’s Department of Orthopedics. In case you missed our call yesterday, this is a reminder that the results of your MRI are in and ready for you to review. Please call back when you get the chance, thank you, and have a pleasant day.”</p>
<hr/><p>Tobio wakes up with his shirt doused in sweat and stuck to his back at a time on Wednesday. He doesn’t know where his phone is and doesn’t care to find it, but he also doesn’t have a way of checking the time without it unless he could manage to get so far as the kitchen and check the green numbers above his stove. Tobio doesn’t feel well enough to make it as far as the kitchen stove, but also won’t (can’t) admit that he doesn’t feel so good, opting instead to decide that he’s felt worse as he reaches for his crutches. </p><p>(It will be up to you to decide what’s good news and what’s bad news, alright?)</p><p>He gasps when it hits him, a hot knife through the crown of his skull again that curls around his spine, the worst Headache he’s had so far. So bad it’s not even A Headache, it just burns white, and he sees double. Tobio’s jaw hangs open, and just like in the dream, he doesn’t scream. He should lay back down, he should take the painkillers, he should call for Miwa<em>—</em>Tobio stops himself. On a normal day, when he’s up, he’s up. On a normal day, he doesn’t take a painkiller first thing in the morning or call for anyone to walk him through his most basic routines. He decided last night, this morning, between the two: today is going to be a normal day. </p><p>(You know that feeling you’ve probably had the last few days when you go to stand up?)</p><p>So normal that Tobio keeps his eyes squeezed shut as he uses what must be the whole of his strength to pull himself to his feet<em>—</em>foot<em>—</em>nearly knocking the empty water glass off the nightstand he uses for balance. He shifts his weight, back, forth, left, right, until he’s sure he’s right-side up, aligned perpendicular to the floor. It takes forever to find this equilibrium, not that he can hear himself count the seconds when his ears are ringing. But Iwaizumi also said he might need more time to adjust, that’s all. He’s got another 11 days until he has to follow-up about his head. He’s adjusting. That’s all.</p><p>(I suspect the hit you suffered on Saturday, even when it really looked like nothing at the time, is what made Sunday’s that much worse.)</p><p>It’s Wednesday and like every other day of the week, Tobio has a routine he follows, even during off-season: run, then shower, and then fix his nails. He’s already adapting by deciding to skip the run, given his knee isn’t strong enough yet and how the only thing that takes him longer than the balancing is the actual moving from one room to the next. It’s all angles and tough goings—navigating the drop between his rug and the bare, wood floor, hoisting his crutches around the doorway, staying vertical—but he can usually go faster. He’ll get better at it; for now it’s just whatever works, whatever it takes to get into the shower (check) and fix his nails (check).</p><p>When he gets to the bathroom, he turns on the lights. He does not look at himself in the mirror.</p><p>Instead, Tobio lays his crutches out on the floor, lowers the toilet seat so he can sit on it in a way that would also let him drop his forehead onto the cool porcelain of the sink's countertop. He’s crossed the mountain. He’s made it this far. His stomach just needs to settle, that’s all. He’ll even adjust again—he’ll go nails first, then shower.</p><p>(You were out for twelve seconds. A <em>long</em> twelve seconds. I timed it.)</p><p>The feeling he gets in his fingertips when his nails are too long used to be really worrisome for him, so much so it really felt like something was trying to crawl out of his nailbeds that he couldn’t shake out. Aside from that, it also felt like the nail length affected how much control he could exert over the ball in practice, and so he told Kazuyo, who told him this counted as personal maintenance too, that he just needed to find a practical way to keep up with the feeling before it really started to get to him. Tobio did, and then he bought five versions of the same nail clippers and kept them in the exact same five places no matter where he lived for nearly twenty years; all this to say, when the overhead light is too oppressive, Tobio can reach into his medicine cabinet to grab the nail clipper and the file without picking his head up. He can also grab the hand towel hanging from the rack next to the sink to pull over his head. Practical.</p><p>(You're doing well today, that's great, but there’s no telling what the next few months—)</p><p>Tobio can, he <em>can</em> take care of himself. If he can do this, he’s on the right track, surely. Even if—the <em>snap</em> of the clippers catches him off guard, even though he’d been the one to do the snapping—his nails are a little uneven. He can fix that.</p><p>(maybe a year—)</p><p>He gets through three fingers on his left hand like this and doesn’t vomit even when he really wants to before the bathroom door opens.</p><p>(—might look like for you.)</p><p>“Tobio.”</p><p>Tobio huffs in response.</p><p>“<em>Tobio</em>,” Miwa presses again. </p><p>“<em>What</em>?” he retorts.</p><p>She sounds like her arms are crossed, but Tobio has to focus; it’s everything he can muster to line the trimmer to his nail and press down. With the towel over his head, all he can see is his left hand going double on the white countertop. “What do you think you’re doing?” Miwa doesn’t ask. </p><p>“I do this once a week,” Tobio insists.</p><p>“Yeah, you <em>did—</em>”</p><p>“<em>Do—</em>”</p><p>“Tobio, come on.” He hears the shuffling, the movement that happens when someone decidedly goes from standing to kneeling. Miwa’s closer, and his chest tightens at the idea of being touched. “What’s this about?”</p><p>(Asada had been a young prodigy. Then she announced her retirement.)</p><p>“At least look at me, maybe act like I'm here, if you’re not gonna talk to me.”</p><p>Tobio can’t. That's the problem. It’s that bad. His head hurts that bad, sitting under the lights burns that much, clipping his own nails is now so hard he could scream and he can’t even scream because he doesn't know what will happen if he opens his mouth. He can't even move his head, moving his eyes feels like a mistake. He's frozen.</p><p>“If you wanted your nails fixed, you’re doing a shit job,” Miwa says, and then suddenly there’s another, smaller hand in his line of sight, out of nowhere. Tobio recoils and (something) shouts, between his mouth and each one of his individual cells.</p><p>“No! I’m doing it myself!” Tobio finds he isn't whispering, he doesn’t recognize his voice; he yanks his hand away from where Miwa’s own grip the edge of the counter. Her nails look better than his do, right now. But. But. “I have to do it myself.”</p><p>“You really don’t," she states, cool.</p><p>“I do.” Tobio lines the next nail up with the clippers again. He trims his pointer finger much too short, hissing through his teeth. “You have to let me do something for myself, Miwa<em>—</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“What happened—”</em>
</p><p>“<em>—</em>If I can do this now, I’ll still be able to play.”</p><p>“That’s not how it works."</p><p>“Says who? <em>You</em>?” Tobio spits, lining up the clippers again with trembling hands, pressing down too close to the nail bed with a <em>click</em>. He's not whispering now. “What do <em>you</em> know?”</p><p>“Would you stop already?" Miwa's not whispering either, as she commands, begs. "You’re not acting like yourself.”</p><p>“I won’t be myself until I can play! That’s the, the—" (That's his whole thing, isn't it?) (Isn't it?) "Miwa, I can't go back to school, I'm not smart enough to go back to school—"</p><p>"Tobio, <em>stop—</em>"</p><p>"And I'm bad at people<em>—</em><em>talking, </em>even<em>. </em>It's, it's<em>—</em> everything's too hard, now. But if—if I can do this, I can fix the grid, if I can do that, I can play!" (And if he can play, he can be Kageyama again. It's that simple.) "I won’t be anything until I can—<em>damnit.</em>”</p><p>Just then, Tobio snips the skin holding his right pointer finger’s nail to its bed, and before he can say anything he’ll regret, there’s blood dripping down onto the white of the sink and a shock of pain throbbing in its wake. It's sick, looking at the slow slide of the red, going numb enough for Tobio to shut his mouth and just watch it happen.</p><p>“You happy now?” Miwa huffs, reaching into his medicine cabinet, and then, “Don’t answer that, I know.” </p><p>She might say (something) after that, she might not. He’ll need a bandage on his finger. To stop the bleeding. And he hates this part, but he lets it happen. Even as his skin is crawling and it hurts, even the adhesive is painful.</p><p>Right pointer finger bandaged, the silence hangs heavy as Miwa moves to put the bandaids back where they belong, and toss the remnants into the waste bin. “Your nails are half done," she says, "do you want me to fix them?</p><p>(No.) But he also doesn’t want to go back to bed like this. He can’t bear the idea, nails, half done? He can’t, he can’t—</p><p>"Tobio?" She's dipping under the towel to look at him; Miwa looks sick too, he thinks. (He knew, somehow, that she must've looked worried sick.) "Please talk to me, you gotta talk to me."</p><p>Tobio opens his mouth, takes in a shakey, shallow inhale, but nothing comes out. (Nothing's ready, he's too far behind.) (Please understand.)</p><p>Her mouth, her whole expression, crinkles into a frown. "I don't understand what you're trying to say," says Miwa.</p><p>(He hopes she recognizes him, doesn't get him mixed up for a stranger as he'd done to her.) Tobio tries again. Nothing. (It'd be easier to cry. He might have some relief if he could cry about it. Anything's better than nothing. A sound could make up for all the word's he's missing.) Tobio doesn't so much as find a single word.</p><p>The lights to the bathroom go out.</p><p>“I, uh, left my charger here yesterday.” Tobio and Miwa both slowly look up towards the doorway. It's Hinata, standing with the light from the rest of the apartment hanging over his head. (Tobio can't read him.) (It's like he's seen a ghost.) (It's like he's looking at a ghost.) “If you need a hand, Kageyama-san, I can help. Try and fix his nails. No pun intended.”</p><p>Miwa looks to Tobio, not that he looks back. (No rolling away now, huh? No running. No hiding.) (Just shakey, shallow breaths.)</p><p>"Can I help?" He knows Hinata's asking him, specifically. (Haven't you done enough already?) (He's really sorry, you know.) (Please understand)</p><p>Rather than argue on behalf of his control and his dignity, he lets Miwa slide over on the tile to make room for Hinata on his knees, and one takes the file, one takes the clippers. Both of them are deft and quick, efficient, functional. Tobio does his part by keeping himself very still and counting his inhales, exhales to moor.</p><p>“You can tell me if I’m doing a bad job, Kageyama,” Hinata says, after all his right-hand nails have been clipped and three of his left-hand nails have been filed. “I know you want to.”</p><p>The bathroom light buzzes overhead, the grate of the nail file scratching back and forth below. (Tobio doesn’t know what would fall out if he could unclench his jaw, if it’d be words that might manage to navigate up and out of his throat or a great, painful knot.)</p><p>“I mean it. Your thumbnail and your middle fingernail are two totally different shapes, and they’re probably uneven on top,” Hinata tries again, tries really hard to sound like he’s cheerful or demanding. “You hate that. You’d never let me get away with this, Kageyama, come <em>on</em>.”</p><p>And he’s not wrong. Kageyama would never let Hinata get away with ruining his nails. He wouldn’t let anyone get away with ruining his nails because he wouldn’t let anyone else do his nails for him. Never, not when he could do it himself, exactly how he wanted it. And he managed it every time, had always taken that responsibility as given as recognizing his hands as being connected to his arms being connected to his body.</p><p>(Tobio can’t even manage having a body, and right now, no matter how hard he tries, something feels too removed to feel whole.)</p><p>“Did everyone know before me?” he asks, a quiver of a question. (Please understand.)</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“Oikawa-san and the team. And my parents. And you—did you all know I might have to—” (What's the word? What's the word he means?) “—stop playing.”</p><p>“No one knows for sure," Hinata says (too quickly), eyes darting up to catch Tobio scowl, crumple, freeze. “I mean it, no one really knows right now. But I do think they all just,” a pause, “know what they saw.”</p><p>“I’m not ready to stop playing,” Tobio whispers, maybe to Hinata, maybe to the sink, but between the two it’s Hinata whose breath hitches.</p><p>“Is that what Iwaizumi-san told you to think about? Before he left yesterday.” Hinata whispers back; Miwa's hands stop moving, her eyes close shut. “Retirement?”</p><p>Tobio nods his head, but his voice doesn’t crack. “I did everything right. And I’m still not ready.”</p><p>Hinata, however, looks like he’s been cracked open, his brows fracturing angry lines across his forehead, for just a second, there and then gone as he keeps working, moving on to file Tobio’s right hand with diligence. “I’m not ready, either," he says. "I'm really not."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I want to see the video," Tobio says, at some point.  “If there's a replay, I want to see it."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Hinata asks if he’s sure, really sure, before obliging—the light of the screen is still a bit tough to look at, even with the brightness on the lowest setting—and hands his iPad off to Tobio. He asks if Tobio wants to watch it alone and leaves when Tobio decides that he does.</p><p>The video he’s looking for is right there at the top of the search— “Tobio “The King” Kageyama | Dangerous Save | Paris 2024 Qualification Tournament Pool B”—but he’s stopped by the thumbnail. It’s a picture of him, but not? No, that’s Kageyama, standing up, getting ready to make a toss beside the net. He looks ready. He looks strong. Tobio stares at Kageyama, the volleyball player, for a moment, a few moments, before he goes back into the search bar and types in something else. </p><p>“asa<strike>sa</strike>da mao 2014 olympi longprog<strike>eam</strike>ram” is enough, and Tobio clicks on the first video he sees. He’s a little less confused now that he has a face to put the name to—the young woman doing slow, labored laps around the Sochi ice rink has a face he’s seen in ads for just about everything, but instead of holding a face cream or a chocolate bar with a smile, she’s? Pensive, maybe. Somewhere between thinking too much and tired of thinking at all. The commentators prattle on quickly about her silver medal in Vancouver four years prior, her disappointing short program the day before, the failure of her trademark jump shown in slow-motion. A critical mistake all the way down to how she’d wrapped her ankles. Disastrous, they say, as the camera cuts back to the same tempered face, gliding to a stop and taking her starting position in the exact center of the great arena. </p><p>Tobio recognizes this. Not the video itself, and nothing about what it physically represents, but the position unseen that Mao is in, the exhale through lips formed like a circle and all it is that she has to do next. Tobio knows what it’s like to stand in wait in the middle of the stadium and pray it’ll be enough.</p><p>When music starts, so do the jumps. Tobio doesn’t know the next thing about figure skating or how it’s supposed to look on an Olympic level, but there’s power and grace in the way Mao moves and balance to them both. The announcers seem shocked after the first jump—”triple axel”— and the crowds’ cheers grow louder and more confident and peak as she starts into a sort of dance sequence that flies with the swell of the music. It’s good, he thinks. Not because of the music or the costumes or anything like that, but because she’s free from everything that’d weighed heavy on her sad, stroking steps at the start of the video, and she flies high enough to catch something she’ll take with her once the video is over. She is victorious before the song even ends, and when the music finally does stop, the crowd goes wild and Mao’s concentration crumbles into fat, smiling tears.</p><p>The video comes to an end and the queue readies up another video from the same Olympics. Tobio, instead, takes a deep breath and types something else into the search bar. </p><p>“kageyama tobio paris tournament pool b”—he clicks on the same thumbnail he’d avoided just a few minutes before and holds his breath as the browser loads.</p><p>Tobio recognizes this video because he actually recognizes it. His fingertips prickle as the camera pans past a roaring crowd to show center court at Ariake Arena. Of the people he recognizes, he actually sees Iwaizumi first, arms crossed and fixed like stone with some of the B Team members lined up beside him. Yaku's biting his nails, Hoshiumi is bouncing back and forth between the balls of his feet, everyone’s on edge, though given what they’re up against and what’s at stake, what else is there to feel? Rallies against The Netherlands seemed to only get longer and longer as the game went on, peaking in speed and length and power during the fourth set. The video looks like it should be playing at double speed: Number 4 for the Netherlands starts with a vicious serve, received by Hyakuzawa, set by Kageyama, spiked by Sakusa-san, received by Number 7, set by Number 12, spiked by Number 15, received by Ito, set by Kageyama, spiked by Hinata, received again by Number 7, set by Number 12, spiked again by Number 8, just as powerful as the first time. Ito makes the receive but he’s still recovering from the last rally and it’s too high. Kageyama is unfazed, he sprints towards the barriers, arms out to make the set back towards the team and Tobio can tell—no, remembers—exactly where and when the grid snapped. Kageyama twists in the air to set the ball proper just before his foot catches on one of the barriers and he topples over it, bringing down the wall with a crash and a bang. As the Kageyama in the video caught his left foot on the barrier, toppling it over and taking his body with it, the ball sails towards Hinata, who’s hand connects with the ball as Kageyama’s knee hits the gym floor, the ball making the point as Kageyama’s head hits next. The rest of his teammates on the court don’t even realize he’s lying limp on the floor a few feet behind them until a few shouts from the spectators tune sour and everyone turns around to see that he’s been rushed by their coach and their medical team. A whistle blows for a time out and the court all but empties.</p><p>All but one.</p><p>Hinata stays on the court. It’s Hinata, alone, on the court, static and still. Even as Atsumu and Sakusa turn away from the spectacle courtside towards Hinata, frozen beside the net, the pan of the camera never shows his face. His back, perpetually to the camera even as the frames jump, is the only thing memorialized to this url, along with a head of hair and the slumped heaving of his shoulders. </p><p>Tobio doesn’t need to be told what’s happening, what's happened, what's been done; he knows exactly what Hinata must have looked like.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>brains are complicated aren't they</p><p>they really did serve miso soup in the rio olympic village for breakfast. every single article i read said there was at least miso soup and kimchi served as part of the athetes' asian buffet and then there were literally no other details??? </p><p> <br/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yscAKatTJDs">you owe it to yourself to watch mao asada today</a></p><p> </p><p>UPDATE 4/20: behold, twitter user shrimpchipsss' depiction of <a href="https://twitter.com/shrimpchipsss/status/1360450485161914368?s=20">hinata's loss</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. will the mountain keep on giving?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s no real halftime in volleyball, just three-minute intervals between matches, maybe a whole ten minutes between the second and third set if such a request is made to the officials.</p><p>This interval in-between, or the stretch of afternoon that Tobio needs to crash after ruining his nails this morning, will likely last, by all estimates, anywhere between twenty minutes and three hours. Kageyama Miwa understands and it’s fine; she’d already wrestled for the rest of the week off and came out victorious, so it’s not as though she's got another fall spread shoot to lose sleep over. Kageyama Miwa understands that Tobio’s gonna need to catch a lot of sleep these days, she knows this because the doctors had sent him home with a blue folder, filled with recovery information printed entirely in 10-point font, and between the two of them, it's not like Tobio's gonna read any of it over. Kageyama Miwa understands this and understands better than anyone that sometimes it’s easier to see the whole picture from a few steps back, a play from the stands, a new trim from the mirror. The part where she runs as fast as she can in the opposite direction, still peeking over her shoulder to see what she’d left behind, makes the understanding easier only as it removes her. Miwa is thirty-four years old. She can’t run as fast or as far as she used to and feels no shame in admitting it. She’s got other things to admit, too, while we’re all here. It’s stupid as hell to send a concussion patient home with directions printed in 10-point font. She only caught about half of Tobio’s babbling in the bathroom but what she did catch still hurts. All of this—the standing in her brother’s kitchen, leaning against the empty sink with her arms folded and all the lights off save the radiant August sun bleeding through the balcony’s glass door—is only happening to her now because of karmatic retribution, reimbursement for the times she was too scared to come home any sooner than the very end of Kazuyo’s final weeks. She's still scared. And she doesn’t understand Hinata.</p><p>Really. Miwa just doesn’t <em>get</em> him.</p><p>Though that’s not right. It's not like they hadn't met before all of this, intermittent between V.League matches and Olympic medals. She's even met his little sister, ends up seated beside her every few months in the stands of another world-class match, and it's not like Tobio didn't introduce her to Hinata with some unusual and unprecedented sense of enthusiasm. People <em>love</em> this guy, and Miwa gets that, maybe? He’s very popular amongst the fans, because he’s a good player or something? Whatever, Miwa can tell he doesn’t use conditioner and can’t tell why he’s still here. Because he <em>is</em> still here—Miwa’s looking right at him, shimmering in the full sunshine of the balcony, from where she's cloaked in shadow, leaning against the empty sink. He’s still here, even though she’s here, even though Tobio’s asleep. Did she mention the sink is empty? Hinata’s still here, and on top of fixing Tobio’s nails, he emptied the sink. The sink had a number of dirty dishes in it as of this morning. Miwa should be leaning against a full sink, alone, in the dark, in morbid contemplation of the series of events that’d led her to this exact moment on the precipice. Now, the smell of green apple soap under her nose, all she can think about is how much she doesn’t get Hinata—the appeal, the big deal, the person. Makes it hard to ascertain how much more frightened she should be.</p><p>Who even <em>is</em> this guy? Hinata Shouyou?</p><p>He’s lax, crossed at the ankles, leaning on his elbows over the guardrail at the speckles of passing pedestrians dotting the city street below. Miwa opens the sliding glass door to stand at a comfortable distance behind him, propped up by the door frame, where she decides to ask, straight out: “So what are you doing here?”</p><p>Hinata’s shoulders prickle at such a question, and Miwa can tell he replies with more words than he intends to: “I came back because I left my phone charger here. And because I forgot to give back the key.”</p><p>“Well, saw you left the key on the counter.”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“And you found your charger?”</p><p>“Yep! It’s in my bag now.”</p><p>“Okay.” Miwa’s tone lingers as she waits for Hinata to really look her in the eye. He gets there, eventually. “And the dishes?”</p><p>Hinata’s face runs a few shades darker and redder than his hair. “Oh, sorry!" What the hell. "I guess I thought I’d try to be helpful? If I overstepped, I—”</p><p>Miwa shakes her head before he can finish the sentiment. “No, I appreciate it," she says, assured and tart; the shadow of the apartment is just to her back, you see. "But I'll be honest with you, I don’t understand why you’d bother with any of this if you didn’t have to.”</p><p>And there it is. The "what is this what are you doing here who are you" for someone who isn’t technically a "stranger" but not technically a "friend". Good thing Miwa’s well-equipped to fold her arms from the doorway, half-inside the apartment, half-out, and wait for whatever Hinata has to say for himself.</p><p>What she’s less equipped for is the change in his expression, a blink-and-you-miss-it answer before the response, a flicker of something strange and feral. What she sees in that split-second is if the grown man and his athlete’s physique, leaning over the balcony, are simply part of an optical illusion of some kind. Like if she turned the image upside-down, then Miwa could see Hinata for what he really is.</p><p><em>Small</em>, she thinks. <em>And hungry</em>.</p><p>Now that, Miwa understands, actually.</p><p>Before Hinata can attempt a more palatable, invulnerable answer, Miwa decides to do exactly what she normally does when she feels the way he must; holding a finger up to signal a pause, Miwa goes back inside towards the kitchen and the fridge, and returns as quickly as she came with two of the beers she picked up last night with the takeout. She hands one to Hinata.</p><p>He laughs a little, tension slipping off his shoulders as he uses the bottom of his t-shirt to wipe the perspiration off the bottle cap before giving it a good twist. They share the first sip in the relative silence urban Tokyo can provide. “I guess,” Hinata finally says; Miwa watches a bird land on the rail of the balcony beside theirs. The sky is an endless sort of blue, cloudless and clear. “I guess I just thought I learned this lesson already.”</p>
<hr/><p>“Miwa-chan,” Kazuyo wheezes, a year, eight months, and probably like, fifteen days before he dies. “You know a fancy degree won’t do what you want it to do for the family, right?”</p><p>"What do I want it to do for the family?"</p><p>"Fix it."</p><p>Miwa frowns, then deepens the frown. He doesn't talk like he has something to teach her as "Ojiisan" and not like he's got something to share as "Kazuyo-san", but sometimes it still sounds like she should've known. Kazuyo makes everything sound so simple.</p><p>His eyes crinkle at the corners, then. “So, that’s a ‘no’.”</p><p>“<em>Kazuyo-san,”</em> Miwa scowls<em>.</em></p>
<hr/><p>Somewhere in Miyagi, also during this interval, the Tanakas are taking their lunch breaks together at a café equidistant from their respective places of employment. A friend is joining them.</p><p>“I mean, there’s no way Kageyama is really going to have to retire, right?” There are bits of rice stuck to Ryūnosuke’s chin as he says this. Kiyoko, off-screen so long as she leans back in her chair, motions like she would to wipe her own face; Ryū mimics her until he catches onto what she’s trying to communicate and figures he’ll need a napkin.</p><p>Nishinoya hisses, emphasized by the static of his phone’s speaker. “<em>Shh,</em> don’t say it like that!” Anchorage is beautiful and crisp this time of year on top of being six hours ahead of Sendai, so Nishinoya is technically eating dinner—beef stew—and doesn’t have to go back to work in forty-five minutes. “Kuwabara kuwabara, now knock on wood!”</p><p>“He was passed out, Noya! Like, dead on the floor!” Kiyoko keeps an eye out for any signs of irritation from the other patrons in the café as Ryū knocks hard, three times, on their table, which is almost certainly laminate painted to look like wood. “I’m not trying to jinx ‘im, I just saying! I can’t imagine a world where that simpleton isn’t playing volleyball, y’know?”</p><p>“I know, right? Who woulda thought this day would come now, this soon?”</p><p>Kiyoko doesn’t have to so much as <em>tsk</em> for Ryū to know she’s got something to say on the matter. He and Noya, Anchorage in a frame propped up against the table’s napkin receptacle, all wait patiently for Kiyoko to decide how best to explain how she, too, has leapt, only to trip and fall over a few hurdles. She knows what it feels like, is what she's trying to say. “But that’s just it, isn’t it?” is how she starts.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There’s a video on YouTube going viral right about now too, not from Sunday’s game, but from Tuesday’s press conference, where up and coming sports journalist, Watanabe Eiko (23) made the sorry mistake of asking Miya Atsumu (27) if he was, and quote, “looking forward to the responsibilities of being the National Team’s new starting setter for the foreseeable future.”</p><p>Somewhere between the clicks of cameras flashing, the regular hustle and bustle that comes from stuffing a room full of reporters into a meeting hall and hoping for the best, Atsumu squints. On screen, it passes as a face someone might make if they had a speck of dust in their eye while they stared into a very bright light.</p><p>“You want to know if I’m excited?” he asks, slowly. To clarify, Wantanabe-san probably presumes. She nods, eager, the front fringe of her bob catching on the corner of her mouth while she reaches to hold her recorder that much closer to the stage.</p><p>“<em>Hell no</em>,” Atsumu says, clear as a day into his microphone, and the whole room goes as silent as the dead for a moment. Wantanabe-san blinks, pulling the strand of hair out of her slack mouth.</p><p>“First of all, and I’m tired of having to explain this every four years when the newbies don’t do their research: there’s no starting setter for the National Team. There’s an A Team and a B Team, and bein’ on the B Team doesn’t mean anything other than you play the other half of the matches that the A Team doesn’t. That’s it.” Atsumu’s face is red and getting redder, blending where the scarlet of his National Team jacket ends and the skin of his neck begins. “I’m no sloppy second-string, and even if I was, no one dreams of setting for the National Team because the other guy got his brain scrambled like eggs at brunch, alright?”</p><p>“Miya-senshu—" Eiko stammers.</p><p>“Second of all, did you see Tobio-kun go down?” Eiko’s mouth clamps shut here, a replacement for what would’ve been a highly embarrassed and meek ‘no’. “Were you there? Did you see the video?” Atsumu takes his sights off Eiko long enough to address the dozens of other people in the room. If he notices Yaku’s jaw, on the floor, or the bead of sweat rolling down Aran’s temple, then he doesn't stop himself on their behalf. “Did we all see the video? He bounced his head off the damn floor and then didn’t get up and you’re asking me if I was thinking that I’d <em>start</em> next season? Trust me, I wasn’t thinking about any Olympic spot when he went down— I was thinking that that could’ve been <em>me</em>.</p><p>“Easy. You see these players go runnin’ after the ball to keep the game alive all the time, every game, and then it turns out that it’s a wrong move? A handful of wrong moves, and then it’s all over? All of it? Everything they ever worked for, <em>poof</em>, gone. All these other guys on the team thought the same thing too, don’t let ‘em tell you any different. We’re all pretending he’s gonna be just fine because we’d wanna be just fine. But if that was me right now, listening to anyone’s jabber implying <em>retirement</em> because of something I’d done just fine a thousand other times, I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”</p><p>The cameras restart their rhythm of point-click-flash in double-time now, like it's a race and the feared mention of 'retirement' a gunshot; more shouts from eager and curious reporters swarm the stage and bounce off the ceiling.</p><p>“Can’t play <em>volleyball </em>anymore? No way. I don’t know what I’d do.” The final shot shows Atsumu’s mouth is drawn taut in a harsh line, his eyebrows bowing as he shakes his head, the end of the video but a few seconds away. “I have no idea what I’d do.”</p>
<hr/><p>Once you get past the unwarranted good mood and the extraneous anecdotes (Hinata's current concern? His sister appears to have a boyfriend she's not telling him about), Hinata's actually a pretty private person. He keeps his gaze restricted to the city skyline and only extrapolates on his thoughts when Miwa encourages him to do so, which altogether is an awful lot of pressure to perform under, but they both know where she’d polished this particular skill. “I thought I learned it the hard way, too, that you can’t play if you’re not in the right condition, but the thing that got me through it was. Uh,” he pauses, “knowing I’d get to try again another day, I guess? Maybe that match was over for me, but I’d get to keep playing, somehow, somewhere, if I stayed ready.”</p><p>“And you tried everything to stay ready?” Hinata sputters as he nods, almost certainly conjuring more instances of "everything" than Miwa could ever ask to hear of.</p><p>"Yeah. Everything and then some, just to figure out a routine that worked for me. And it’s easy to forget what knock-out tournaments are like when most of your matches are written up in a contract at the beginning of the season, y'know?” he says, after another sip from his beer bottle. “Maybe it should’ve been more obvious, that playing at this level, getting to play at all, was going to come to an end at some point. But you know what? It never felt like that. It really felt like we were always going to get to keep playing more and more volleyball.”</p><p>Another sip; the carbonation just barely hits the back of Miwa’s throat when she hears something of an afterthought: “I’d try anything to keep this going.”</p>
<hr/><p>Fast forward two years; Miwa might’ve been, oh, about twenty-one or so, when in a particularly nasty spat with Mamorou-san, who became her equal, too, once she started paying her own bills, Miwa had been told she was acting like Kazuyo. Now, to be fair, Kazuyo was the one who had told her if she wanted to do anything else with her life besides crunch numbers, then maybe she should go find that anything else instead of staying in school and crunching numbers; her decision to drop out of university and the weight of the world that had been resting on her stats degree is what the argument was about in the first place. But Kazuyo had been gone just a few months, the wound still stinging fresh, and the way her father wielded Kazuyo’s name with so much spite had hurt her almost as much as it? Confused her. She didn’t understand. All of her sharp and witty comebacks had died in the moment, and so she asked, much quieter, what he meant by that? Kazuyo knew everything. He never raised his voice, never stomped so stubborn as she did, right then. Her father had replied, disparaging, first, that she wouldn’t understand, and with some prodding, that Kazuyo had mellowed out quite a bit by the time she’d known him, due either to his age or his running.</p><p>And she wouldn’t understand for some time, but in the end, her father didn’t lie—however many years ago, Kageyama Hiroko had died at the reasonably young age of 54, and then Kageyama Kazuyo, who wasn’t really known for being cool or kind or relaxed, had gone and done some traveling for the better part of a year and a half. Around the world once and then again, a pilgrimage detailed in postcards that her mother hung on the fridge when she was actually home, only to return to a bedroom in the northwest corner of his oldest son’s house. No one had to explain to Miwa what it was like to be someone before and someone after, and to quote her father, the Kazuyo after losing his wife had “mellowed out”. “Got much more tolerable with age,” he’d said.</p>
<hr/><p>(Obviously, Miwa never brought this conversation up to Tobio, who would've handled it poorly at the time when he also had other, middle school-sized fish to fry. No one had to explain to Miwa that they're opposites: if she remembers spending enough time with their parents to resent their absence, Tobio probably doesn't. If she has no idea what she wants to do with her life, Tobio knows exactly what he wants to do with his life. If she visits Kazuyo's shrine every few months, Tobio never visits at all, and honestly, doesn’t have to, not when he’d visited Kazuyo’s hospital room twice, three times, four times as often.)</p>
<hr/><p>“Oikawa, you are wasting my time.” Not that Hajime has anything else to do, during this intermission, this ten-minute commute back to work after his lunch break. “If you want to know how he’s doing so bad, why don’t you just ask Hinata?”</p><p>“I tried! He was tight-lipped about it on the phone, radio silent over text,” Oikawa pouts, and Hajime can tell he’s pouting. “For someone who doesn’t know how to stop talking, he doesn’t actually say much—”</p><p>“<em>Hmph</em>. Now, who does that sound like—”</p><p>“<em>Hey</em>—”</p><p>“I’m not getting fired just because you want to know how Kageyama's doing,” Hajime states, holding his phone between his chin and his shoulder and thus freeing up his hands to dig out his work ID from the bottom of his backpack. “Or sued,” he adds; he’s either just ahead of the lunch hour rush or just after it, only a few other riders spread out among the train car’s seats. Weird. </p><p>“Why does it sound like you wouldn’t tell me Kageyama’s status even if it wouldn’t get you fired?”</p><p>“Because that’s also true.”</p><p>“Come on, Iwa-chan, give me something to work with here! I’ve been Googling this shit for hours!” The mental math is done and Hajime's confident enough in his work; it’s close to nine at night, in Vancouver, nearly past Oikawa’s bedtime. “The Japan Times says that this concussion might take him out of the game permanently.”</p><p>Finally, Hajime locates the thin piece of plastic underneath his laptop and a few receipts, flips it over in his hands, thinks of swiping back into his office at Ajinomoto and keeping the lights off as he shuts the door. They've already had that conversation, the one where Hajime is crushed any of this happened in the first place and blames himself for the whole field of sports medicine's failure to properly diagnose and treat mild concussions. “The Japan Times doesn’t know anything. No one knows anything right now because it’s too early to tell. That’s how concussions work.”</p><p>“So, when are we supposed to know?”</p><p>In Oikawa’s defense, Hajime had had a another similar, more specific conversation, in his very own office, just a few days ago, not that he can share so much as an inch. “The Federation is old school, and so are the doctors. They might tell the public, but otherwise, Kageyama’s recovery is staying on a need-to-know basis. If anyone’s gonna say anything, it’ll be him, or at least his agent.”</p><p>“Ugh, leave it to the JVA to be cryptic and weird, I guess,” Oikawa sighs, letting Hajime think the topic is dropped for all of two seconds. “But in your <em>professional opinion</em>—”</p><p>“Stop.”</p><p>“Haj—”</p><p>“If you’re this obsessed with sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, why don’t you just call up Kageyama and ask how he is?” Hajime enquires, if not shouts, into the receiver. The one other commuter in this train car, an elderly woman, but a few seats up from him, turns around to see what’s causing the commotion—he’s forced to wave back at her, awkward.</p><p>“<em>Apfft</em>—Call him?” Of course, Oikawa is <em>scandalized</em>. Whatever. “And—<em>pssh</em>—ask him myself?”</p><p>“I can send you his number,” Hajime offers.</p><p>“I’d rather chew glass than let Tobio-chan believe I’m even a little concerned about him, at all, even remotely, on a personal level.”</p><p>“So then why does it sound like you’re at least a little concerned about Kageyama, on a personal level?”</p><p>There’s a long pause, long enough that Hajime thinks his cheek hit the red “off” button on accident. Before he can check, Tooru mutters something soft, “You know, that was well-played, Iwa-chan."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the same halftime, Yachi Hitoka has excused herself from her desk to wheeze into her cellphone in the farthest stall of the bathroom at her Tokyo office of employment. This is the third time this week she's done this, and it’s also Wednesday, which means their little trio is three for three on Emergency Toilet Break Facetimes.</p><p>He notices something new every time they do this, too. For example, yesterday, Tadashi saw an advert for Van Gogh exhibit tours starting next month at the museum Tsukki works at. Today, the tiles of the ladies' room wall behind Yachis’ head are revealed to be quiet a lovely teal, according to Facetime, in case anyone was wondering. “Do we think Kageyama-kun is still alive?” she asks with a quiver.</p><p>Tadashi tempers his tone in all the ways Tsukki does not when they answer at the same time: “Yes, Yachi.”</p><p>“But you two haven’t heard from him.”</p><p>“I mean, it’s not like he has anything worthwhile to contribute to conversation on a <em>good</em> day—” Tsukki drolls.</p><p>“And Hinata hasn’t said anything—”</p><p>“Well, he’s a moron—”</p><p>“Three days seems like a long time to not just say anything!”</p><p>“Yachi,” Tadashi interjects, in spite of the sinking feeling that whatever he says will be too late; between death and taxes, Yachi’s spirals of prepared anxiety are simply a given at this point. It's just that usually, she just doesn’t have three days of proof in the form of ignored messages to back up her more-typically apocalyptic concerns. “I think we’re all getting too worked up about this, and they'll get back to us when they get back to us—"</p><p>But then Yachi gasps, the acoustics of the bathroom dragging out the echo, around, and around, and around—“Do you think Hinata would forget to tell us if Kageyama was dead—”</p><p>“<em>Yachi</em>—”</p><p>“—like he forgot to tell us he’d squared away his plans for Brazil for three months?”</p><p>“<em>Wow</em>,” Tsukki mouths with curled, upturned lips, awfully enthused in a way Yamaguchi has elected to ignore. </p><p>“No, Yachi,” Tadashi says, taking a slow draw of air through his teeth as he quickthinks some kind of logical explanation for this. He says the first thing he thinks of: “I think it’d be on the news, at least.”</p><p>“The news?” Yachi buries her face into her free hand just off-camera, the teal tile behind her head but all that her phone can see. “Oh no. Oh <em>nonononnono</em>.”</p><p>“Nice one, Yamaguchi,” Tsukki grins.</p>
<hr/><p>At the same time, Asada Mao is visiting her sister in Nagoya. Or maybe she’s doing another ad for a mattress company. Or she’s wrapping up the last few shows of her annual summer ice show series. Or maybe she’s spending the afternoon with her nose in a book, her old dog lounging on the floor warmed by the midday sunshine. If you have any guesses as to what exactly a retired athlete might do once they decide to move on from sport, Mao has probably tried it. If Mao has come to terms at all with the gargantuan fact that her Olympic programs have been viewed millions and millions of times, she probably did so years ago. If she understands that someone, many someones, might’ve viewed her programs again and again to be comforted or inspired or moved, then she’s not thinking about it, not right now. That’s fine. She’s learned this lesson already.</p><p>Also during this interval, Ushijima Wakatoshi is walking between buildings at Tohoku University onwards to his fourth period class, Intro to Psychology. No “ors” here, he's never been one for indecision—Wakatoshi decided exactly what he was going to do shortly after he decided not to renew his contract with Orzel Warszawa in favor of returning to Miyagi to support his mother when both of his grandparents fell ill. Of all the things he could’ve done after his final National Team season last summer, getting a teaching degree during the day and assisting the coaches at Shiratorizawa in the evenings were, as he understands, not within the realm of anyone’s expectations. (“More like, people are going absolutely apeshit. <em>Woohoo</em>, crazy, you know?” Tendou had said about some comment section, somewhere). But, as he explained in his exit interview, he’s not slowing down as much as he’s getting started, not saying “Good-bye” as much as he’s saying “Thank you”. His grandparents had footed his Shiratorizawa tuition, and Shiratorizawa was, in many ways, the foundation of what became a fruitful decade-long career. It's the truth. He’s learned this lesson already.</p>
<hr/><p><strong>INTERVIEWER:</strong> So, people speculate, but I have to ask Japan’s Cannon myself: is there a life beyond volleyball?</p><p><strong>USHIJIMA-SENSHU:</strong> There must be, yes?  </p><p><strong>INTERVIEWER: </strong><em>(Laughs)</em> Well sure, but what do you think that life-without-volleyball is going to look like for you?</p><p><strong>USHIJIMA-SENSHU:</strong> If I seem perplexed, it’s because I don’t think that there’s going to be a life without volleyball, for me. Even as my professional career comes to a close, I don’t think a life without volleyball is necessary. Many old teammates of mine still play—</p><p><strong>INTERVIEWER:</strong> Like Bokuto-senshu—</p><p><strong>USHIJIMA-SENSHU:</strong> Yes, like Bokuto, and many others. Old friends. My father, as well. I’m lucky to retire with my health. It’s just as fortunate that I can pass on my good fortune to the next generation of players. There’s many people who work together to make volleyball happen and get the athletes on the court in the first place. I’ve learned even the smallest roles can be very important. From the coaches to the spectators. Volleyball is a team sport, after all.</p><p><strong>INTERVIEWER:</strong> Are you retiring to become a regular fan, Ushijima-senshu?</p><p><strong>USHIJIMA:</strong> No. (Laughs) I didn’t need to retire to do that.</p>
<hr/><p>This midday interval only winds up lasting about an hour and a half, and by the end, Miwa thinks she understands Hinata a little bit more.</p><p>Only a little bit though. She by no means purports to have reached some deep truth about the specific and unusual brand of insanity bottled up and blooming within the tanned, freckled skin of Hinata Shouyou. If doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is crazy, then what’s the mechanism for the single-minded pursuit of the same thing over and over as a means to do it again called? Miwa’s feelings on the matter are best represented by the conversation she’d have with Alisa later on that evening. </p><p>“I think I underestimated how close they are, actually,” she blurts out before Alisa can so much as think about a polite greeting; Miwa's already done the math, and it's only eleven o'clock in LA. Alisa's awake. “I might also be going insane.”</p><p>“Now, milaya, dear, let’s be reasonable—”</p>
<hr/><p>The parts of Hinata's narrative that aren’t overblown are only so because they’re painfully familiar. Maintaining your form is part of the sport, staying in shape is part of the sport, the ways you take care of yourself must be fundamentally embedded into your flesh and your routines until they're as easy as the life you want to leave out on the court, every time. Kageyama Miwa now understands that all of the things Tobio was allowed to learn in spoonfuls at his grandfather’s table were things Hinata learned the hard way, or worse, by reading about them. Which is to say Tobio learned concussions were bad by not getting them and Hinata had read about concussions in the first twenty Google Search results or in another anthology between proper sleeping habits and effective calf stretches. Which is to say, Hinata had known what was going to happen next even before Tobio's head hit the floor.</p>
<hr/><p>“I don’t even know where to start with this!” Miwa will feel manic and sweaty while she explains what she knows when she's supposed to be listening for Tobio, lest he fall in the shower and decides to resent her for letting him do so. “Like he didn't say a lot, but what he said was so dramatic and overblown—I almost laughed, right in his face, but he was serious. He was serious! And I’m sure if I asked Tobio right now he’d be the same way!” She will stop talking only as long as she needs to maintain proper airflow. “Did you know Tobio and Hinata met in middle school?”</p><p>Alisa's line will go mute at the change of direction, but because she loves Miwa, and misses her just as much as Miwa curses timezones, she won't give up. “Can’t say I did?” she will say, trying to sound contemplative, but will come off mostly as confused.</p><p>“<em>Yeah</em>, and then Hinata made a promise that he’d keep up with Tobio? Like, on the highest stages volleyball has? Worlds and stuff? Or, wait, there was something about who'd stay on the court longer or something <em>vague</em> or <em>weird</em> or <em>whatever</em>—but then he basically used that as motivation for the <em>rest</em> of his career. The rest. Of his. Career, Alisa.”</p><p>“Okay?"</p><p>“Is that normal? Is it me? Am I the problem here?"</p><p>“I don’t know? Lev is still close with a lot of his old teammates—”</p><p>"Okay, but was Lev so fundamentally changed by his high school volleyball teammates that he planned his career around them?"</p><p>Lev is a model, so the answer unspoken will be 'no'. "What does that even mean?"</p><p>Miwa will rub out the tension sitting stagnant and sticky in her forehead, altogether a few steps away from smashing her head in against the wall; she's already read the instructions in the blue folder, okay, she'll know what she’s in for. “Alisa, Tobio promised back? And then they just kept this shit up? For years."</p><p>"Oh."</p><p>"Like they kept track of all the stupid competitions they'd have between themselves. They're in the thousands. And they play in different leagues so they can play against each other for half of the year, and then they play together on the National Team for the remaining half. They <em>planned</em> that."</p><p>"<em>Oh</em>."</p><p>"<em>Yeah</em>."</p>
<hr/><p>"I actually told him I didn't want to see him when he came to Rio for the Olympics," Hinata squints into the neck of his bottle. His eye looks green through the bottom of the glass, even though it's not.</p><p>“Really?” Miwa blinks—offhandedly, she’s reminded she was in Rio for the Olympics, that they could've crossed paths if that's the way the river ran. “Why not?”</p><p>"I don’t know? It seemed important to do at the time, though now it feels like the kind of thing that really only makes sense when you're twenty," he replies, turning the empty bottle over in his hands, brow furrowing. “Maybe <em>that's</em> why Natsu won't just tell me..."</p><p>"You said you had a point," says Miwa.</p><p>"Oh! The point is that it all worked out in the end! When I got back to Japan and started playing for the Jackals, it wasn’t like I never left or anything, but things also weren't so different? Er," Hinata mulls it over, grabs the boxcutters, decides how he wants to do this, "it's like everything was going exactly how I wanted it to.”</p><p>“What do you mean?” It's not really a question, not really a prompt; Miwa's here but so are all the other things Hinata's trying to unpack and make room for right now. Plans, unmade. Dreams, unshared. The past, just the past. Game over. Miwa can see it all, from a distance.</p><p>“Well, everything just sort of lined up for me, I couldn't believe my luck," he says, and he's there again, in his debut season, instead of under an empty, blue, birdless sky. Apparently, he'd had a great team who played other great teams and, like he already said, no more knock-out tournaments, so the games were great even when they lost. He was seeing his friends and family all the time, more than he'd been allowed in years. His time in Brazil sounds like it's his, all his, but that first year going pro—that's the part he'll open up, take out of it's box, show people. People don't think to flip it around, look at it all backwards or upside down. Tobio was really happy that year too, they both agree. He'd mellowed out, all it took was everything he'd ever wanted. That's how Hinata explains it, anyway—when everything you've ever worked for becomes your life, what else is there to do besides be happy about it? He thinks, after that season, the time they spent, spend, will spend apart is just part of the volleyball; Miwa thinks he talks about Tobio like he does Brazil. </p><p>"You know, I wound up watching all his Olympic matches, anyway. Stupid," Hinata says, sounds like he's smiling, but isn't.</p>
<hr/><p>“Okay,” Alisa will try to rationalize it fairly before Miwa will, like Miwa does for Alisa's. Predicaments. “I think I see your point. They share a deeply meaningful relationship!”</p><p>“But what does that even mean? What do you call a guy like that? Friends? Rivals?”</p><p>“I don’t know, what does Tobio call him?”</p><p>“I don't know!" Which won't be true. "Okay, 'a moron' mostly, but in a way that makes you think the sun shines out his asshole—but everyone <em>adores</em> this guy, Alisa—"</p><p>“Oh I know! He’s Ninja Shouyou! The Greatest Decoy! You know he's got a poster at the Shibuya station—"</p><p>“<em>Yeah, yeah, yeah,</em> but like, building your career around playing with and against this one other guy? Who <em>does</em> that?”</p><p>Because Alisa will try first, she'll have an answer first, and luckily for them both, it will be the correct one: “Tobio does, as it’d seem.”</p><p>Then the water will turn off, Miwa will hear the shower curtain open before she arrives at her destination, however far away she needs to be to understand what Tobio says when he doesn't have anything to say. “I’m so tired," she'll reply.</p>
<hr/><p>“If this really is the end.”</p><p>Hinata swallows. Tobio's going to wake up in another five minutes, not that either of them know at this point. Their bottles are empty, the sun has lowered enough to hide behind a skyscraper a few blocks down.</p><p>"Like, if I go to Brazil and come back and he's a different person again. If this was really the end, and I stayed on the court longer than him," Hinata looks over at her then and it's all Miwa can do but hold her breath at what it is she sees, "then I already lost."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*slides you a "sorry i made ushijima retire for the plot" cake*</p><p>i've loved reading the comments on this fic so far and can't thank you (yeah you) enough for your generosity! yes you!!</p><p>i'm on tweeter @_roxast</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. and if all of our days are numbered</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Every volleyball match ends with the blow of a whistle; there’s a definitive finish, a victory won in a decided number of sets, and the winner is simply whoever gets there first. Granted, that makes it sound like a race. Tobio used to play volleyball like it was a race, and before that, played like the six days between Saturday afternoon matches would be six whole years. In reality, the game only ever takes as much time as it needs. </p><p>That boy, the one who we knew to be trying/trying (and failing) to keep himself awake at his grandfather’s kotatsu long enough to eat dinner, somewhere in Miyagi prefecture? Remember him? He’d taken the long way home with his grandpa that day, on the path through the park by the stream, after playing a full match against Niiyama Junior. If he were to be honest, he would’ve admitted he was already growing tired sometime after they’d left the gym but before they’d passed the picnic blankets and the little, yappy dog on a leash, but the boy is a bad liar, and luckily for him, his grandpa is a far more observant person than the situation truly calls for, in the way you too would hope to be after decades of life and a wealth of experience.</p><p>“Tobio,” says the grandfather, who is also the kind of person who lets his grandchildren call him by his given name because he calls them by theirs and because he thinks it important for children to know they are as capable as the rest of the members of their family. “Tobio,” Kazuyo says, “at the end of the game there, did you go easy with your serves on purpose?”</p><p>The boy, who is the kind of person who probably won’t ever understand what it means to “manipulate” or “lie”, at least not well or with any sort of success, recoils in shock, pouts like a bucket of water’s been tossed over his head. “Why did you decide to do that?” Kazuyo asks him slowly.</p><p>With some time to consider what he wants to say (he’s gotten much better at it), the boy—Tobio—replies, honest: “If I didn’t, the game was going to be over too fast.”</p><p>Kazuyo hums, some long, low note, tuning into the start of a chantey that’s to become years and years and years long.</p><p>“I didn’t want to stop,” Tobio continues, hoping he’ll be understood by the end of it, not knowing he is already. “I wanted to keep playing lots and lots longer.”</p><p>(You remember what happens after that, right?)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(Well, that makes one of us.)</p>
<hr/><p>The first thing Tobio does when he wakes up is apologize to his sister.</p><p>“Stop, stop<em>, stop,</em>” and she waves him off with her free hand, a glass of water in the other; he’s got his prescription halfway down his throat when Miwa asks: “And what is it you’re apologizing for, exactly? Be specific.”</p><p>Tobio swallows; the water and the pills happen to go down as well. Truthfully, if he were to count, this is the fifth thing he’s done since waking up. The fourth thing was to slowly sit up in his bed so he wouldn’t choke on the sip of water he’d need to wash down the painkillers with. The third thing was to find out that Hinata and the National Team had portrait retakes and another big, sponsored press event, which he’d left to prepare for before Tobio had thought to call for him. The second thing was to call for Hinata, then Miwa, then “someone”—the only summon audible from where his sister had been pacing in the living room from corner to corner. The first thing he’d done after opening his eyes was float inside the standstill that is just waking up, before he’d really had the chance to remember himself—after realizing he was awake, still with a body, still with a heart that beat, but before he recollected the crawling under nailbeds, a head too light and hollow, a heart that sunk heavy. He'd been reminded, wading back to reality, of the Asada Mao video he’d watched before his accident, and he even tried to hold out his hands, shaped like onigiri, like the Kageyama Tobio he remembered from the YouTube thumbnail. When all he saw were two pale swathes of skin and a sad, aching bandage, but a bandage nonetheless, wrapped around his right pointer finger, Tobio decided he should apologize. But then Hinata had already left and even if Miwa’s here, he doesn’t know what to say. How to say it. Didn't come up with a plan in advance. <em>Or you forgot it</em>, he feels his face go hot. <em>Or you forgot again.</em></p><p>“Yeah, just as I thought,” Miwa says before he can really feel lightheaded about any of it. “Try again when you have something to be sorry for.”</p><p>Again comes in at just under five minutes, giving Miwa enough time to raid his pantry, lament the lack of snacks, and return with two protein bars, the kind covered in chocolate that taste, to him, more like after-dinner dessert than post-workout recovery.</p><p>Miwa disagrees, clearly, from the first bite; she’s chewing on her own bar, however uninspired, with another in hand to pass to Tobio when he says, “I’m—”</p><p>But then she whips her hand, and with it, the protein bar, back towards her person for safekeeping. “<em>Don’t</em>.”</p><p>Tobio's mouth hangs open and all but makes some weak, offended noise, the same one he's made every time she's done this to him since he was six or seven. “I wasn’t going to apologize,” he insists once Miwa’s decided she’s held back on him long enough and forks over the goods.</p><p>“Great, I’m glad you’ve decided to listen to me,” she replies, glib. She’s pulled up the chair that’s since remained as a permanent fixture in the corner of his bedroom to slouch on it, backwards. “Now this time, quit making faces.”</p><p> “But this is just my face,” Tobio says, between chunks of the chocolate that he hasn’t bothered to chew and swallow yet.</p><p>“Yeah, because you let it get stuck like that. Strong work, Tobio.”</p><p>Now that just isn’t true—the muscles of the face don’t actually get stuck like anyone’s mother or teacher or grandfather insisted it would—but Tobio frowns at this, at Miwa’s disregard, regardless. “Can I say what I was going to say now?” he asks.</p><p>“Yes,” but Miwa draws out a line to connect her answer to her qualification, “but I still sense an apology coming on.”</p><p>Tobio opens his mouth to protest, but. But. She’s right, of course. It’d been his intent to apologize, or at least say something to quell his shame, but it’s also worth mentioning how much context, phrasing, purpose regarding his own mortification can be, and have been, forgotten in about ten seconds of merely subsisting. Tobio takes another bite of protein bar with his hung-open mouth to buy more time, deciding where to start and only coming up with images of his pale hands against the white countertop in his bathroom, then the deep red of the blood dripping from his right pointer finger. “I don’t remember,” Tobio admits, “I don’t remember what else I was going to say.”</p><p>“And that’s okay.” Miwa rests her chin on her arms where they’ve folded over top of the chair. “That’s really okay.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Iwaizumi-san,” Shouyou starts here, by hanging over the bus seat in the second row to catch Iwaizumi’s attention in the first; he has a pen cap in his mouth but acknowledges Shouyou by way of a nod as he seems to scribble something important across the clipboard balanced on his knee. The National Team is in the home stretch of Official Business before a few of their sponsors throw them a victory party—Iwaizumi was probably handed an itinerary and told to follow it to the minute, yet Shouyou might as well take this time to ask: “How did Oikawa react when you decided you weren’t going to play volleyball in university?”</p><p>“Poorly,” he replies, prompt; Iwaizumi takes the cap out of his mouth as his browline shifts from concentration to, well, maybe something like amusement, something like partiality, if not irritation. “But he also thought I was only doing it because I’d taken the loss to Karasuno too hard.”</p><p><em>The loss to Karasuno</em> is a distant string of words, but it unfurls quickly enough, the series of events that sits as a fond memory in the back of Shouyou’s head also, as it occured, ended the volleyball season for a few third-years at a nearby private school. “Sorry,” he offers with a wince.</p><p>“Out of all the things you could possibly say, do <em>not</em> apologize. I didn’t want any of that crap then, and I definitely don’t need it now,” Iwaizumi warns, stern, but he pulls into a smirk as he says it. “Because I did take it pretty hard at the time. Not enough to really impact my decision to stop playing in college, but pretty hard.”</p><p>“So then why did you decide to stop?” asks Shouyou, just as the bus pulls up to a red light. “Didn’t your school have a team?”</p><p>“Oh, it did, and that was just the problem. My school <em>halfway around the world</em> was going to have a men’s volleyball team,” Iwaizumi replies, and something that smells like the ocean and like sunscreen in leans over to whisper <em>‘oh right’ </em>in Shouyou’s ears before he really has to listen to the rest of Iwaizumi’s explanation—he already knows what this is like. “Volleyball wasn’t going to be a club there, it was going to be four years of tryouts, proving that I could go pro once I graduated. And there’s a point where you kind of gotta decide what it is you really want, you understand. Only when I got to that point, I just realized that there was something else I wanted to do more than play volleyball, and I wasn’t going all the way to California just to half-ass it.</p><p>“Once I explained that Oikawa, that’d it’d just be a different way for me to crush him,” Iwaizumi gets back to his clipboard, flipping through a few pages, “he got it just fine.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“But also, you’re never allowed to talk like that again,” Miwa mutters, a bit of an afterthought to telling Tobio that he smells and should shower.</p><p>Baffled now, rather than just insulted, Tobio knows he’s staring at his sister, and blankly; he’d only been somewhere in the middle of explaining that his t-shirts are in the second drawer of his dresser, shorts in the third, before she’d swiftly shot that train of thought down<em>. “Huh?” </em>he grunts.</p><p>“I mean it. I’ll fight you myself,” Miwa stops her burrowing long enough to level a glare at him. “What I lack in height and weight, I make up for in something else, hopefully.”</p><p>She holds up another shirt, announces to herself with some authority that it’s almost certainly too small for him before tossing it on a slow-growing pile she’s built on the very same wooden chair, when Tobio says, “I’m sorry I—.”</p><p>“Look, I’m not upset because I had to clip your nails for you. We’re way past that.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>Another shirt is lifted from the drawer, examined, and finally approved. “Or because you implied I don’t know anything about anything. Obviously, that just isn’t true. I’m very intelligent.”</p><p>“I know?”</p><p>“What I’m more upset about is that you seem to think that you're stupid,” Miwa frowns; it’s only when she snatches a pair of shorts that Tobio really remembers that part of what he’d said this morning and his gut, no matter the meds or the protein bar, goes hollow. “And an utter chore to speak to.”</p><p>(It’s, it’s—everything’s too hard, now.)</p><p>Though that’s not really fair, or really accurate. It’s not like Tobio needed to hit his head for the feeling that’s left him unsettled in the last few days to have crept up on him otherwise, from time to time. The gaps in his knowledge, the lapses in his conversation, the ways in which he’s never sure how he appears to others—those weren’t really concussion things, he knows. He knows those are the weights on his feet as he’d tried with growing effort, over the years, to not be his own hurdle and— he just—he’s not—he’s never been—“I know what I’m good at,” Tobio murmurs.</p><p>Miwa, who’s always known everything, truthfully, and used to get perfect scores in math, just shakes her head. “It’s way too early on to know<em>—</em>”</p><p>(Did everyone know before me?)</p><p>“Nee-san,” he really tries to stop her, then. The thing too is just that, that he knew these things about himself and wasn’t even insecure about them anymore. Hadn’t really had a reason to be, once he knew what his strengths were, and even though he’d wanted to at least try to be a more knowledgeable, competent person, wanted to be a better teammate, at some point Tobio started treating those things like he treated leg day or like sprints or like the defense drills when his teammates were ordered to aim right for him, the setter. “They were hard for me before, too.”</p><p>“You graduated high school,” Miwa points out, eyeing him with some uncertainty. Is she, for once, wrong? “Your grades were decent.”</p><p>Because of breaks between classes, hours before and after practice. Flashcards and notes, run through over and over and over. Tsukishima and Yachi and Yamaguchi, each with varying areas of expertise, who could ace tests and scaffold Tobio just enough to clear Satisfactory, just to keep playing. “I had a lot of help from other members of my team. And our manager. Because I needed to pass to play.”</p><p>“Well, now you train in a whole other country, with a completely different language,” Miwa continues, tucking the clean clothes she’d chosen under her arm, slowly. “How do you talk to the Italians?”</p><p>With Italian instructionals downloaded to his phone to listen to on his commute, on his runs, that tell him how to say hello (ciao) or count to ten (dieci). More flashcards. Watching YouTube videos and taking notes in his journal and practicing with the teacher on the screen, all to achieve the blank looks from his teammates that he recognized only because he’d probably made the same faces at Romero and other foreign players, all to keep playing. “Mostly with volleyball,” he says, sullen.</p><p>“But that’s not all though,” Miwa urges, making her way towards his crutches that are leaning back up in their designated spot against the wall, not yet moving to hand them off to Tobio. “You must know a little Italian, right?” </p><p>Enough to check out at the grocery store, to ask for the bathroom, to tell his neighbors he’s only staying here for a few months, to tell his teammates what part of town his apartment’s in. And even then, there’s a stutter, but admittedly, yet another scaffold. “They use a lot of hands,” Tobio says, with this in mind.</p><p>Miwa, with the tilt of her head, asks “What does that mean?”</p><p>Tobio thinks fast—holds up his right hand and pulls all his fingers together in a pucker, then apart, together, then apart just as quickly. </p><p>“And that’s supposed to say something?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Well,” Miwa pauses, “explain?”</p><p>What it means? Something that doesn’t make for the best example to show his sister, of all people, given it’s supposed to look like a clenching asshole. One of his teammates on Ali Roma, Tullio, explained as much to him through cheered guffaws his first season on the team. “Paura, eh? You see?” he’d ask, doing the same thing with enough ease to suggest he’d made such a gesture more than a few times before, and naturally, this is what Tobio remembers of Italy.</p><p>“<em>’Scared’</em>,” he replies. “It means ‘scared’.”</p><p>“Like ‘I am scared’?” Miwa mirrors the same action, fingertips together, then apart in what is now much more obviously a mistake on Tobio’s part.</p><p>“It can mean that,” he says, waiting until Miwa’s hand drops to add, “but it can also be a challenge.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Omi-san,” Shouyou moves on, one step up as they all wait in line to get their National Team portraits retaken and updated for the website; Sakusa steps too, one slot behind in the queue with some room to spare. Shouyou only really knows he’s being listened to so long as he follows Sakusa’s eyes above his medical-grade mask—their photographer has some kind of sneeze-cough-gross combo going on, Shouyou can hear it from this far down the hallway, and Sakusa, ever-observant and prepared, would likely wait to unmask until the last possible moment. Not that Shouyou could blame him for it, even if it makes it hard to know if he’s been heard when he asks, “What did you do when Ushiwaka retired?”</p><p>“Congratulated him on an excellent career and wished him well,” Sakusa replies swiftly, if a bit muffled, just as someone up ahead cues “smile” and the camera shutters once, twice over.</p><p>Shouyou blinks. “That’s all?”</p><p>“What else is there?” They move again in tandem, another few paces down the hallway once Suzuki hops off the stool and out of the spotlight, Gao up next. “Other athletes can only dream of the kind of success he had. To play to your fullest potential and retire at the top of your game, still in perfect condition.”</p><p>“I mean, sure, that’s true, but what about you? You weren’t,” Shouyou shrugs as he attempts to be vague, “disappointed? Frustrated? Maybe a little sad for him?”</p><p>They move up again, another portrait done, and when Sakusa nods after some consideration, it feels something private. “I wasn’t sad for him. For all the reasons I already mentioned,” he replies, choppy and open-ended. “Unfortunate about his family, of course, but it’s a privilege to be able to quit while you’re ahead.”</p><p>“But,” Shouyou fills in the pause that follows. “You weren’t sad for him, <em>but—</em>”</p><p>Sakusa glares like Shouyou has a third head, like he just sneezed without covering his nose and mouth at the lunch table, like he suggested the two of them attend a music festival or an amusement park.</p><p>“I wasn’t sad for him,” he repeats.</p><p>“I believe you?”</p><p>“I mean I wasn’t sad<em> for him,</em>” Sakusa emphasizes. “<em>If</em> I was sad, it was only on my own behalf.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I’m not going to apologize this time,” Tobio announces, handing Miwa his crutches to lean back up against the wall now that he’s seated once more on the bed; she’s going to make him practice from now on as per the instructions from his doctor, made him hobble up and down his short hallway a few times just to get his feet under him. A good idea, even if she’s scrutinous, even if they’re both a bit agitated; Miwa’s hair is up again. “But you were really upset.”</p><p>“This is true,” Miwa replies, and a bit of the conviction she’d needled him with earlier lingers—<em>’if you’re not even balanced then why rush the first step?’</em></p><p>“But you won’t let me say I’m sorry,” Tobio says, deliberate, looking up at her with a bit of the petulance he’d reacted to her earlier commands with in turn<em>—‘because.’ </em></p><p>Where Tobio’s sitting, Miwa, for once, is taller than him and seems to at least pretend to be considerate of his argument as she taps her fingers to her chin, the utter image of contemplation, before she shrugs again and says “Nope, I won’t. So you should just drop it now.”</p><p>Tobio frowns as he attempts to drop it.</p><p>“Stop that.”</p><p>Tobio tries. By the look on Miwa’s face, he’s not been successful.</p><p>“<em>Wow</em>, okay, I can see we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” she sighs, sweeping him up with the wave of her hands, motioning him to move over. “Pick a side. I’m sitting down.”</p><p>His legs swing themselves over the left side of the bed and it’s only when he’s elevating his knee once more does he understand the change in current, that Miwa is circling around to the opposite, right side, by the wall, that usually spreads out empty. “What—no—what are you doing?”</p><p>“We’re having a heart-to-heart,” she informs him.</p><p>Tobio makes a noise in his throat that protests.</p><p>“I know, I know.” The mattress shifts as Miwa takes a seat, her nose turning up upon making contact with the navy sheets. “<em>Ew</em>, it’s warm.”</p><p>“I have been sitting here <em>all day</em>.”</p><p>“That’s got to change, too. Doctor’s orders, it’s in the folder he sent home.”</p><p>“What folder he sent home?”</p><p>Miwa makes herself too busy to grace such a question with such an answer, takes one of his pillows and flips it over to the cold side before she shifts her weight to lean back on it—when they sit against the headboard, side by side, Tobio’s legs clear hers for what must be fathoms. “You scared the shit out of me earlier,” she finally says, once she’s found a comfortable spot, arms folded.</p><p>Tobio winces. “I know.”</p><p>“When something goes wrong, just for me, on a normal day, and I can’t just fix it? I get a little stir crazy.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“You don’t have to agree with me so quickly,” Miwa elbows him in the gut, and Tobio lets himself exhale whatever it was that he’d been holding in his lungs. “Okay, so, consider again: something goes wrong, except it’s you—” Tobio’s back in the bathroom, but from a bird’s eye view, where he can only watch himself hunched over the counter, numb to the sight he knows is going cloudy at the edges, to the throat he knows is closing up—“and you’re clearly distressed and despondent in a way I’ve never seen you before—” to the something in his lungs wringing out ‘<em>no, no, no</em>,’ over and over and over again until they finally come back dry. “Maybe half of what you said made coherent sense, and then the other half was something about a grid?” (If I can do this now, I’ll still be able to play.) “Something about retirement?” (I won’t be anything until I can—<em>damnit</em>.) “It was all scary enough on it’s own, but once I realized there wasn’t anything I could do to fix it?” Tobio’s back in the bathroom, but from a bird’s eye view, watching from a YouTube link, from Hinata’s angle, from Miwa’s angle, as he opens and closes his mouth and not so much as a soul leaves his body, empty and hollowed out. He’d been so ashamed in the moment, but watching it happen over again to a Kageyama so gaunt and frail, it’s, it’s—</p><p>“Horrifying,” Miwa says, but she’s firm, solid, and still present. “You understand?”</p><p>Tobio doesn’t nod, doesn’t take a breath in again, not right away. When he finally tries to inhale, he finds he can still do so, the cold air brought in from the air conditioner cooling his lungs in and out without so much as a quiver.</p><p>“The grid is,” he tries. “When I play—"</p><p>“Hinata already told me,” Miwa cuts him off. “I got it.”</p><p>“Oh,” Tobio replies, though not long, he feels his brows knit together. Wait, Hinata already <em>what</em>—</p><p>“I don’t know what this is like for you,” Miwa reels Tobio and his focus back in, keeps her gaze trained on the far wall, the window shrouded by his black-out curtains. “I have no idea what it’s like to have anything like you’ve had volleyball. But I know you’re scared. I’m scared.” She stops to make the ‘Paura?’ sign and he just about smacks her hand back down himself. “We’re all clearly very overwhelmed about what’s clearly a very overwhelming situation, so why apologize? When we could just,” she’s telling herself, Tobio realizes. Miwa is reminding herself too, “slow down for a second.”</p><p>When she concludes, takes her own deep breath in and out, Miwa leaves her words to the whir of the AC unit and a comfortable silence to share. <em>Like a four</em>, Tobio decides, knowing so far, he’d been trying to speed up, trying to get faster and faster, trying to feel like himself again with a sense of urgency and immediacy that he’d been known to set with. He should’ve known. Tobio considers Miwa’s reminder one more time; he’s learned this lesson already, except.</p><p>Except. Wait.</p><p>Wait, <em>hold on a second…</em></p><p>“But everyone has something like volleyball,” blurts Tobio, though he doubles back almost immediately. <em>Right?</em> He’s not really sure. He’s never thought about this kind of thing with any kind of depth, never really had to. “Right?”</p><p>The bridge of Miwa’s nose is being pinched between her fingers. “I muster everything I have to give you some generous and well-spoken words of encouragement and that’s all you got out of it?”</p><p>“You—” <em>Now, hold on,</em> he’s thinking as he turn himself to face his sister, square, head on. <em>Hold </em>on<em>.</em> “You cut hair and do makeup and know a lot about it. You spend a lot of time thinking about it, and getting better at it, right? It’s like volleyball. It’s important to you.”</p><p>Miwa’s tone is not so deadpan or so stern when she whispers back, almost surprised, “You really think my work is the same as you have volleyball?”</p><p>But Tobio doesn’t have to think so hard about it. He still remembers what he’d thought when she’d told him she’d been accepted to Yamano, his first year of middle school. That even if he was going to miss seeing her every day, though he wouldn’t ever admit anything like that out loud, this was important to Miwa. “Why else would you have moved away?” he asks.</p><p>Maybe he’s said something wrong, when his sister takes her time choosing her words in reply. “You know, that’s a nice thing to say, coming from you, but,” Miwa sighs, like she’d never considered it his way, not once ever before. “I think even if we decided it might be close, it’s not the same.”</p><p><em>Not the same</em>, he thinks. There’s gotta be a better example then. Someone, at least one other person, who knows what he knows. “Mom and Dad,” Tobio decides. “They work. All the time. Why else would they?”</p><p>But Miwa’s already shaking her head before he can finish the thought. “No, no—not the same, no way, definitely not,” she says, sour. “Maybe they’d like to think so. They wish, maybe, but it’s not the same, either.”</p><p>“I don’t get it.” What Miwa says so matter-of-fact, Tobio can’t seem to wrap his head around<em>. So then what are they doing? And why?</em> “I don’t understand at all.”</p><p>“Well then, good for you, that volleyball was never just a job, because it’s only your whole life,” she just shrugs, but it’s this that Tobio has never considered Miwa’s way, not once ever before. “I think a lot of people won’t ever know what it’s like to be so wholly, two-feet-in dedicated to the same thing their entire lives, never getting sick of it, never getting tired of it, never really wanting a break.”</p><p>The slow beat before he knows what to answer back is filled with the knowledge, for once, of how he appears to others, how he’s appeared to Miwa. Another beat after that, and Tobio’s nose curls. <em>Volleyball Idiots, </em>he hears a chorus harmonize in the back of his mind, and with a huff, acknowledges “That makes it sound kind of sad.”</p><p>“It’s actually what I admire most about you.”</p><p>Tobio blinks. “Really?”</p><p>“Don’t make me say it a third time,” Miwa says softly. “But how you pursued volleyball is actually what I admire most about you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Atsumu-san,” Shouyou continues, during their Shiseido-sponsored coffee break, as if the emblazoned napkins, cups, and iced cookies would let him forget it; Atsumu and his sweet tooth are going back for seconds, this time to try whatever the little pink things are on the end of the fudge tray. “What did you do when Bokuto had to retire?”</p><p>“Cried about it,” he answers immediately through a full mouth, the remnants of his last cookie pushed into his cheeks like a chipmunk saves food for later. “Like, sat with him in the back booth the McDonald’s around the corner from the Jackals’ gyms after they terminated his contract. And cried while he stuffed his face with french fries. And then really blubbered more about it because I had to watch him eat fries and I couldn’t have any since I was still in the middle of the season, which reminded me that the only reason he could have them was because his season was over, so, as you can imagine...”</p><p>As Atsumu monologues about how they’d elevated Bokuto’s ankle on the booth seat and ordered four drinks just to get enough ice from the soda fountain to keep it from swelling up again, it occurs to Shouyou that he’d gotten a long and fuzzy voicemail in the middle of the night after a match against the Osasco club once. It’d sounded like two sad, sad souls haunting him from somewhere crowded and noisy beyond the grave. Shouyou had decided he would call back in the morning before he shoved his face into his pillow once more and then never spared it a single thought again until it became relevant, which is to say, right this very moment. </p><p>“But can I be honest with you, Shouyou-kun?” Shouyou doesn’t even have to waste the energy biting down a sort of tongue-in-cheek <em>‘are you usually dishonest?’</em> before Atsumu moves on: “You and I both know this isn’t the same thing.”</p><p>Shouyou nearly bites his tongue clean off anyway, of course.</p><p>“Ask me about when ‘Samu stopped playing,” says Atsumu, once he’s cleared his mouth out with a sip of coffee. “I think that’s closer to what you’re looking for.”</p><p>He’s taken aback about how taken aback he shouldn’t be—it’s not like it hasn’t been obvious enough, to anyone he’s asked so far, why exactly Shouyou might be collecting data on this particular topic. But knowing something to be true and saying as much are two different things, and for as often as Atsumu's chronic case of foot-in-mouth gets him ragged on by his teammates or by his manager or by his brother, he's not lying, just observing. “Okay, well,” Shouyou concedes, “what did you do when Osamu-san stopped playing, then?</p><p>“Knocked ‘im out, obviously,” Atsumu’s blunt and obviously lying, though grinning a bit once Shouyou snorts. “I dunno what I did, honestly. My rookie season really sucked at first, I couldn’t believe how much of my play only got good because I had ‘Samu at my back. I might as well have just started from scratch.”</p><p>Shouyou doesn’t snort again, not then, doesn’t really stop the way his shoulders bow and his hands drop to his sides. He thinks of the target he’s still got strapped to his own spine, it’s weight heavy on the back of his that continues, endlessly, to climb, to pedal, to jump higher—</p><p>“But also,” Atsumu says, after a moment to think and take another swig from his paper coffee cup. “He didn’t really like, go anywhere.”</p><p>For the sake of doing something with his hands, Shouyou sidesteps to refill his own cup of water—however half-empty and Shiseido-approved—as he reminds Atsumu, “But he stopped playing?”</p><p>“Yeah, but we still talk, all the time. He didn’t stop bein’ my brother when he stopped playing volleyball. Same with Bokkun, we’re still friends, even if we aren’t teammates. Moving on without them also meant moving on with them, just like, on different days of the week, doing something else together instead,” Atsumu explains, before he takes stock of the other people in the room, beyond the snack table, and dips into a whisper. “Which is why you can’t tell them I said any of this, it’ll go right to their heads, and I’ll never hear the end of it.”</p><p>Shouyou nods back, feigning gravity. “I wouldn’t think of it, Atsumu-san,” he says, because he’s already thinking that he knows this, knew all of this, and feels much better now that it’s been affirmed as truth. Iwaizumi moved on to a new role in the sport, that ultimately, didn’t keep him from challenging Oikawa like he always had; Ushiwaka had to move on for reasons beyond his control, and while Sakusa had spent some time regretting the loss of a (Friend? Rival? Kindred spirit?), he’d still celebrated what there was to be celebrated. Things don’t have to change, even if they shift in shape, Hinata knows. He knows this already, that some things don’t come apart, even when separated—</p><p>“Of course, it’s all easier said than done.”</p><p>—until they do.</p><p>He could just, frankly, not ask. He could let Atsumu go and monologue again, react only to the jokes, comfortable with his own conclusion. “What is?” Shouyou asks even so.</p><p>“Keepin’ in touch. They’re always driving distance away from me, at least.” And he feels his stomach dip; the days before he leaves Japan again are numbered. “We’re all so busy, catchin’ up feels like getting to know a whole new guy, sometimes.”</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “KA-GYA-MA! It’s Bokuto! Listen, I watched you crash and burn at the qualifiers on Sunday and you better believe if anyone knows what that’s like, it’s me! Except I broke my ankle. A few times? And the last time was in practice and not like, on television or anything? Anyway, I was just thinking about you, because your face is literally the whole Sports section this week, when I remembered how almost everyone I’d ever played with called me after the news of my retirement broke to see if I was okay! Have you been getting a lot of calls like that too? I bet you have, I bet you’re busy answering one right now. Call <em>me</em> back when you’re free, so I can impart even more sagely wisdom all over you, okay? Later!”</p>
<hr/><p>The parents, somehow meant to represent every set of parents on planet Earth—the ones who did not/did not answer their phones when called by their oldest daughter, three times in a row? You remember? They still keep her childhood, from birth to twenty, in scrapbooks under the television stand, right next to her brothers’. Their daughter knows this and yet it still manages to surprise her, every trip, though few and far between, back north to her parents’ house in Miyagi. The last time Miwa had gone personally made her crazy, especially insane, because they were out of order. The pink book held her middle school years, the purple one held high school, and yet, this time, the purple book was filed before the pink. Why. Why were they out of order, she hadn’t turned to ask Tobio at the time, because he didn’t live there anymore and would also have the audacity to shrug and stupidly say ‘I don’t know’ anyway. “Does it matter?” He might’ve even asked, then, or worse: “Why would they make them and then never look through them?” A mistake, she decided, to ask this of the same brother who still calls her ‘Nee-san’ despite never being demanded to do so and having no reason apparent to keep it up after she’d left, after they became better, actual friends as adults, after he became a whole grown-up, well-into his twenties, who pays taxes and can figure out the train system on his very own.</p><p>In the present, Tobio jolts to sit up as soon as the thought enters his mind, turns to the sister he’d just scared out of her skin, and asks “Can you open the window?”</p><p>Miwa, having been sure he was already asleep, nods, as she clutches her chest and makes moves to oblige his request.</p><p>It’s late now, and Tobio’s been told that the weather’s been kind enough these last few days that the night is probably perfectly cool. And he’s proven right, once Miwa draws back the curtains and unhooks the lock to pop the window directly in front of the bed open a few fingers tall. The air from outside cuts in balmy, made hotter by how cold Tobio’s kept his room—or maybe his room is made colder by the warmth of a summer night in August when the heat releases, rises, freed from the concrete. It hits his face like a kiss on the nose, and when he inhales, he tastes only humidity.</p><p>He’s a little warm, actually, now that he’s thinking about it. Tobio’s really warm. But it feels good.</p><p>“I’m sorry I made you take off work this week,” he says quickly, suddenly, while Miwa’s back is turned.</p><p>She spins around on her heel, slowly, shaking her head at him as they come face to face—he’d won that one, he knows. “You’re ruthless,” Miwa tells him and Tobio doesn’t say anything to that, though his eyes crinkle at the corners, because he also knows this about himself. “And of all the things you could apologize for, at least don’t apologize for that.”</p><p>“Oh. Then I’m sorry you…” Tobio pauses in consideration “…had to work this week?”</p><p>“Ah, I’ll accept that one. Thank you, I’m sorry I had to work too.” Something in Miwa loosens as she leans against the windowsill, only buildings with some windows illuminated, some not, at her back. “I think I’m gonna try and move on to some long-term television work soon. This freelance stuff is exhausting, I could sell-out for a regular schedule, I think,” she says, mostly just to think out loud. They’re both tired; it’s late now, and unlike Tobio, Miwa hasn’t been crashing for hours at a time, still gets tired after a full day instead of a few conversations.</p><p>“That also ends tomorrow.” And Tobio, once again, finds that he’d been thinking about other things, thinking now, maybe, that zoning out in the middle of discussions might not be a concussion thing for him, either. “I mean it, and not just because the doctor said. You’ll feel better, even if you just get out of bed and hobble around the room and look out the window once in a while. Eat some real food and keep it down.”</p><p>He nods at this, agreeing with all of it, knowing, as per usual, that Miwa is right, until he catches it. “‘We’?” Tobio asks.</p><p>“Yeah,” Miwa replies, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Is there a problem?”</p><p>(Returning to Tokyo after the funeral that winter, Miwa had reminded herself Tobio still had a lot to look forward to. His little team would do well at regionals, and he’d get into Shiratorizawa just like the rest of their family, and their parents would continue to let him do his own thing as long as he wasn’t getting into trouble. Because she had had her own college dropout-beauty school student-sized fish to fry—passing her courses, working around her class schedule, getting a real job once she graduated from her program—and Tobio wasn’t going to be all by himself, you know? Coming back to Sendai after her semester ended in the spring, to a brother who didn’t get into Shiratorizawa, didn’t make it to Nationals, and didn’t want to talk about it, there came a point where Miwa looked between him, their parents, the photo of Kazuyo on the mantel and thought<em> you know, I was a kid too. I’m still a kid, too</em>. The photo of Kazuyo can’t say anything, but he’d never needed to be told. The scrapbooks, out of order, were the first time her parents might’ve ever come close to saying <em>we know. We understand, we know.</em> The brother still calls her ‘Nee-san’.)</p><p>“No,” Tobio answers.</p><p>“Good.” Miwa folds her arms decisively. “No take backs. No apologies. No statements indicating yourself as an inconvenience and not as a family member I’m going to continue to look after whether you’re inconvenient or not.”</p><p>“Fine.” And so Tobio flops back over onto his back, fidgets with the blankets as he tries to decide whether he’s going to be too warm with them or too cold without them. “You’re bossy,” he adds.</p><p>“You’re welcome.” And then, after a tick. “Actually, don’t thank me yet. Someday soon, I’ll probably need you and your volleyball money to return the favor and, like, take care of me in my old age. Thank me then.”</p><p>Tobio sits back up at that, again, with the audacity to be perplexed—<em>spoiled youngest siblings,</em> Miwa thinks to herself, <em>no understanding of what their elders have gone through, would go through, for them.</em> “What about Alisa-san?” he asks.</p><p>“Alisa has very expensive taste,” Miwa replies, a little bit fond, a little bit something else. Knowing, maybe. Doting, at least. “So she’ll probably need all of her money and all of my money, which means that you will have to use your money to take care of me as reimbursement for all the times I spent taking care of you.”</p><p>“But what am I supposed to do?”</p><p>“I dunno. Marry rich, I guess.”</p><p>Tobio frowns.</p><p>“Or get a real job.”</p><p>Tobio frowns, harder probably.</p><p>“Stop, I am <em>kidding</em>!”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Volleyball: LONG LIVE THE KING<br/>
</strong>Status of volleyball titan and Olympic medalist Tobio Kageyama unclear after sustaining head and knee injuries at Sunday’s qualification tournament for the 2024 Paris Games; coaches wait for test results, teammates talk retirement.<strong><br/>
</strong><em>Eiko Wantanabe – August 9, 2023</em></p><p> </p><p>“Well, I just think it’s a bit much at this point!” says Hoshiumi, dropping today’s paper back onto the tablecloth and crossing his arms—a grape vine event that started with a text from Bokuto and a hundred or so yen dropped by Sakusa at the nearest drugstore ends with the National Team as they currently are, passing Tobio’s requiem, printed in the Asahi Shimbun Sports Section, instead of joining the gala (Shiseido <em>and</em> Japanet sponsored, this time) thrown in their honor. “It’s not like he died!”</p><p>“But I do feel kinda sick just thinking about it again,” Aran admits, and peering squeamish at the front page image of Kageyama over Hoshiumi’s shoulder, he shakes off a shudder—all the photos that’d been taken of the incident on Sunday, they’d probably gone with the most tasteful one they could find of Kageyama, sitting up and surrounded by staff and a big white “9” across his back to the camera as Iwaizumi-san cradles his knee. “Injury stuff always freaks me out.”</p><p>Atsumu thumps a hand against Aran’s jacket—something semi-formal is what they’d been asked to wear to an event like this, whatever that means. “Then quit thinking about it, dummy.”</p><p>“That never works! You know that never works, even when Kageyama’s <em>whole career</em> isn’t sitting within arm’s reach!” Aran looks ready to swat right back, too, until something seems to catch his eye, still untorn from the newspaper. “Oh hey, that’s your name, Atsumu.”</p><p>“Wait, what,” Atsumu swallows, snatching the paper next, threading a finger through the words pressed neatly until he finds his name, a thus, his quotations. “Oh, fuck. Oh, <em>fuck</em>.”</p><p>“They pull this kinda crap every time and every time it gets worse,” Yaku says, though he tentatively picks one of the folded pages out from inbetween it’s neighbors to get a look at the damage for himself. “They made a show of Ushiwaka and a show of Bokuto—”</p><p>“Bokuto made a show of Bokuto,” Sakusa cuts off Yaku without ceremony—he’s on the total opposite side of the table, watching the rest of the team huddle over one another to get a look at what, exactly, Wantanabe-san had to say after their presser. “He must’ve talked about his ankle on every talk show that would let him.”</p><p>“Yeah, but knowing Bokkun, that probably helped things,” Atsumu says, steadier, once his outburst is out of sight, handed off to Ito and Inobousaki and Suzuki and all the junior players standing somewhere behind the vets’ table. “The more he talked about it, the more real it got, y’know?”</p><p>“Or the more he talked about it, the more brands reached out to him,” Yaku deadpans, flipping his page over without looking up. “Just saying, I’d be pretty happy too if Nike was paying all of my bills.”</p><p>“Oh shit, it’s a career retrospective,” Hoshiumi says, pointing with fury at a handful of images unfolded for examination across the middle of the table by Gao, dusting his fingers with ink; the present team shares a collective groan, knowing in the back of their mind what exactly a career retrospective means. “Look, here’s the Rio section.” He points to the photograph—the 2016 National Team—turns to Sakusa and whispers a strangely gentle <em>‘that’s me!’</em></p><p>“No way. He’s officially dead,” says Ito. “Inobousaki killed Kageyama.”</p><p>Inobousaki looks physically ill at the accusation, has frankly been a light shade of green since Sunday night. “Stop—"</p><p>“<em>Kingslayer</em>,” Suzuki jests.</p><p>“—but if someone hears you and thinks you’re serious, I will absolutely kill you, though.”</p><p>It’s here that it hits Shouyou, what it is exactly he’s staring at. Rather, he knows that he’s staring at the photograph of Kageyama in the corner of Page 3, the one altogether smaller than all the others printed on the same page Gao spread flat on the table and then left out in favor of laughing at Hoshiumi’s hair choices from 2016. Shouyou knows he’s in the photograph, too, even when the image is upside down to him, because his hair always gives him away. Here, his hair makes the point that the uniforms that he and Kageyama are wearing in the photo aren’t red, they’re orange. Shouyou reaches across a few seats to slide the abandoned page closer and ultimately, it is what he thinks it is.</p><p>“He’s not though, he’s literally not dead,” says Gao; the photograph on page 3 is Kageyama and him at Nationals, circa 2013. “At least not as dead as Atsumu, once his manager gets a hold of him.”</p><p>But the photo isn’t just circa 2013—Atsumu lets his head hit the table—they’re still 9 and 10. Which means they’re still first years, shiny and invincible at their first Nationals, January 2013. Shouyou knows if he looks any closer, he’ll be able to tell it was their match against Kamomedai. “I didn’t even think about Uchida-san!” says Atsumu. "Well gentlemen, it's been nice knowin' you all..."</p><p>“I’m gonna go grab another drink,” Shouyou announces to no one in particular just as someone (Sakusa? Yaku? Both? Neither?) whispers 'wish I could say the same about you' and the rest of the table descends into shambles, ignorant of how the celebration in their honor goes on around them as he grabs his glass and moves toward the bar.</p><p>Shouyou doesn’t really want another drink. Not at all—his empty glass hadn’t even held a cocktail in the first place, just orange juice. He does want to just get up and move around, he thinks. Gotta get some blood moving, maybe, after sitting too long in one place, sitting for dinner and through grandiose and sponsored speeches on behalf of the National Team for making another Olympic games. It’s nice—being a part of history in a great big ballroom after a fine meal and surrounded by plenty of people to pay them attention. Congratulate them, he thinks.</p><p>The bar is conveniently close to the door, he thinks.</p><p>But even if he decides to leave his own party early, what’s it going to do anyway, other than go on without him as Shouyou leaves/does not leave the room, the building, goes/doesn’t go home, sprints/doesn’t sprint around the block, looking/looking/looking over his shoulder the whole way. After 9, comes 10. </p><p>The scaffold of every victory worth celebrating is habit, he knows. And the strongest support beam of every habit is knowledge on one side and fear on the other, he knows, he knows. He <em>knows</em>, alright? Takeda-sensei had made the point most clearly to Shouyou, circa 2013, but Kenma had sharpened the blade, as he’s prone to do. </p><p>Shouyou threw out his back once, in Rio, and he still swears it was nothing serious—</p><p>“Being injured is not the same as being tired,” says Kenma, somewhere in another part of Tokyo, right this very moment—but Shouyou had just fallen weird on the beach and went sore for a few days, had Pedro line bags of frozen vegetables on his lower back. “Don’t you ever think of quitting before the boss can kill you?” is what Kenma had asked at the time over Skype, observing Shouyou, on ice.</p><p>“<em>Kill me?</em>” Shouyou had replied before adjusting at the neck to look at Kenma on his screen, because when he lays down, he assumes the position most like that of a starfish, with his face straight into the pillow. </p><p>“What I mean is that you never really take a break, and you probably push yourself way harder than everyone else does, especially with all the jumping.” Kenma rattles these things off simply, like it’s his grocery list and not the greatest albatross around Shouyou’s neck. “Aren’t you afraid your career is going to be short?”</p><p>“No.” (Not yet, anyway) (He worries his career won’t ever start, at this point in time.) “I’m way more prepared to keep myself strong! This was just an accident, Kenma, I’ll be back to myself in no time!” </p><p>“I’m sure, Shouyou,” Kenma replies, as Shouyou shoves his face back into the soft and forgiving plush of pillow. “But—coming from a friend—it’s okay to quit if you’re not going to respawn.”</p><p><em>This can't be happening to him,</em> is what he'd thought, filing Kageyama's nails just this morning, and then, <em>this can't happen to me. </em>He'd let his guard down, is the problem. And he's mad about it in the same way he might be if he'd let a point sail over his head for thinking he’d be the first to retire between the two of them as if he, in a bitter admittance, hadn't been watching Kageyama go ahead of him since the beginning of forever. And he definitely can't lie to the part of him that’s always going up the mountain, down the slopes of Santa Teresa, wondering if, when, enough won’t be enough anymore, whether what chases him will shoot for the albatross on his neck or the bullseye on his back’s target first. Kenma can’t be blamed for being right, because the body that Shouyou used to catch up to the likes of other monsters, to Kageyama, will break down one day. Sooner than he ever feels ready for. Whether he feels like he just got to the peak, got his view, or not. Once you make it to the top of the mountain, he knows well, the only view left is the one going down. Knowing more, knowing better, watching Kageyama go first—what's it do for Shouyou, anyway? Other than break his heart before it calls upon his remaining strength to even consider hitting the brakes, getting off the bike, and taking it slow so he can get down without making the front page. Goes 9, goes 10.</p><p>It really did feel like they were going to get to do this forever.</p><p>He’s pulled from his thoughts when his phone, charged this time, goes off from his pocket. He doesn’t hesitate to pull it out, warm up at the contact photo, and swipe to answer.</p><p>“Hey—”</p><p>“<em>Hinata Shouyou</em>—” Oh no, it’s the manager voice. He’s getting the manager voice, anything but the manager voice “—<em>we need to talk</em>.”</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “Kageyama! It’s your favorite senpai! Hey, so I’m in a <em>totally weird </em>situation right now, where I just happen to have about 30 handmade “get well” cards from local Sendai-area second graders with your name on them! Wild, right? Can’t possibly imagine how they came to be, but they do have <em>your</em> name on them, so it only makes sense that I mail them to you, wouldn’t you say? Remind me what your address is, when you get the chance. Thanks! Talk to you soon, <em>byeee</em>!”</p>
<hr/><p>Answering questions from the students is probably a million times harder than anything the Rockets served up at the home game that the Adlers lost the night before. Probably tougher than the Olympic-tier interviews that would haunt him at the top of his homepage for weeks after Rio, maybe even scarier than waiting for the first serve off Team France or the Jackals or anyone who’s reputation precedes them a bit. Mostly because, even by second grade, the students are still just so? <em>Little</em>.</p><p>“Oh, you’ll be fine,” Suga says with a careless wave of his hand. “If Asahi and Daichi can make every kid want to be their best friend by the end of the period, then you just need to show-up. You have something they don’t, after all. <em>You’re</em> on television sometimes!”</p><p>Tobio had gotten the full tour of Nagamushi Elementary during Sugawara’s free first period; his classroom looks like any of the others they’d passed down the rest of the hallway, just empty for the time being. Empty, save the wall-to-wall construction paper crafts and colorful maps of places all around the world and crayon portraits with the sun scrawled in the corner, sometimes wearing sunglasses. To get a good look at any of it, Tobio has to duck and avoid the paper chain that drapes from the ceiling and dangles over the door like the streamers at a birthday party where the balloons had been replaced with textbooks. It’s hard to imagine anyone white-knuckling through multiplication tables in a classroom so wholly unlike the classrooms he’d grown up sitting in, but Suga, despite looking the part, with a tie and everything, probably isn’t much like the teachers Tobio had ever sat in class for.</p><p>“Feel free to take a seat, Kageyama<em>-senshu</em>.” Suga’s still teasing as he sweeps his arms wide, offering up rows upon rows of small, identical desks with wooden tops.</p><p>Small, identical desks with wooden tops and bright red chairs that barely reach Tobio’s knees. </p><p>He takes one look at the nearest shiny plastic of what is surely the smallest chair ever made, catches his own, baffled reflection, and says “I think I’d get stuck if I tried.”</p><p>Suga grins. “Better keep trying then. The student that sits there at that particular desk is a bit stiff, but he’ll get the best laugh out of all my kids if he comes into class and finds there’s this great, strange giant stuck in his desk.”</p><p>“You want me to get stuck? Because your students will think it’s funny.”</p><p>“Not just my students,” Suga says, solemn. “I will think it’s very funny as well.”</p><p>It’s then that the school bell rings and rings and rings, but the patter of small feet and the shifting of backpacks against bodies remain no more than a scuffle beyond the walls. Every school, Tobio thinks, sounds the same. Before long, students begin to enter Sugawara-sensei’s classroom in a constant, steady stream. They each react differently to seeing Tobio and his Adlers jacket stand just beyond Suga’s shoulders as he greets them by name, one by one. Some of them gasp loud, their mouths contorted into perfect circles, a few of them act as if a trick has been pulled on them<em>—“hey, who’s that guy?”—</em>and some of them, like the little girl with matching ribbons to hold her pigtails in the desk closest to Tobio, have to crane their necks all the way back to look up at him with wide, wide eyes. Tobio looks back down at the girl, though as soon as she does, she startles, shifting her gaze away very suddenly to the floor. Years of his next-door neighbors’ cat reacting to him the same way tells him the gist of what he needs to know: he’s too much bigger. Maybe she can sense how nervous he is, too.</p><p>“Try getting closer to her eye level and be patient—Hime will come to you!” had been his neighbor’s cheerful instructions, some mild summer afternoon. It hadn’t completely worked, Hime still didn’t approach Tobio’s outstretched hand even after he’d knelt on the asphalt, but she also hadn’t been so scared that time he’d made the effort to meet her halfway that she’d run away.</p><p>Tobio decides to get lower.</p><p>He takes to a crouch, just adjacent to his receive position, and finds that he’s almost too low. Definitely too low to be comfortable, though kneeling still too tall to meet the students’ eye level. The girl with the ribbons watches in some morbid confusion, like what she sees is off-putting and yet she can’t look away. Tobio considers, after deciding he could hold this seat on his heels for about five minutes before his legs start to quiver and grow tired, that maybe this was a mistake. He’s squatting, unfortunately, somewhere between the floor and his full height when Suga finally notices his strife, sometime in the middle of his introduction.</p><p>“Kageyama-senshu played for the Japanese National Team during the Olympics in Rio de Janero, Brazil. Did anyone watch the Games with their family last summer?” Almost a full classroom of hands go up at the same time as Suga’s does, at about the same time he looks over to witness their guest and National Team Member, stooping beside the front row. Not unlike what Tobio remembers of his play, Suga doesn’t miss a beat—<em>Sugawara-san is really, really good at this,</em> he thinks to himself— but his mouth quirks up at the corners as he points with his free hand to a small stack of extra, tiny chairs just beyond his desk. All this to say, Tobio acquires a tiny red chair, for himself, to sit at the front of the classroom in, his knees to his chest but on the same ground as all of the students. “Kageyama-senshu has agreed to answer questions about his life as a professional athlete for those who raise their hands and ask politely, so please take this opportunity to show him how we do things in his favorite senpai’s classroom.”</p><p>All the students erupt in giggles and disbelief that their own teacher could’ve once been a <em>student</em> alongside someone they’ve seen on <em>television</em>. All the students except one, that is—Tobio has to lean a bit to see the boy sitting in the desk Suga had tried to egg him into sitting in earlier, but he’s here now. Face monotone and grim, the student keeps his hands placed neatly on his desk, taped to front of which is a nametag that he’d missed earlier, with kanji as familiar to Tobio has his own name.</p><p>Because, well, it is his own name. Kageyama is the family name of that particular student in that particular desk.</p><p>As for the rest of the class, their questions come slowly, once Suga’s stepped aside to sit on the corner of his desk, leaving room for them and Tobio’s conversation to unfold. In the corner, one boy—Takahashi, says his name tag—asks if Tobio’s arms have ever been taken off making a receive. Tobio says no, but then catches the way Suga makes a rotating motion with his hands. A <em>keep going</em> of sorts, so Tobio keeps going and adds that he has gotten bruises on his arms making receives, probably because there are so many strong players in the V. League. After Takahashi-san is Funai-san who asks if Tobio cries when his team loses a match. Tobio says no, not usually, but thinking of Suga again, says that sometimes it can be frustrating to lose when you know there were things you could have done better to win. Funai-san follows up and asks if Tobio is frustrated because the Adlers lost yesterday, and the answer, technically, is yes, he’d just been much more worried about answering the questions these students have than a 3-1 set blowout. So he says that, and the students nearly laugh out of their seats, much like they had at Suga. Tobio thinks maybe he should’ve said something different, but when Suga shoots him a thumbs up, he decides to shake it off and keep moving to the next question, the next rally.</p><p>How bright are the lights? (Pretty bright, but now that I’m in my second season, I’m used to looking around them when I have to set.)</p><p>How loud are the crowds? (Not sure? It’s hard to hear the crowd when you’re really focused, sometimes. I don’t always hear them.)</p><p>Do the players get into fights with the other teams in the back halls of the arena? (No.) (Well…) (No.)</p><p>Was Sensei really a good senpai? (The best.)</p><p>“What do you want to be when you grow up?”</p><p>Kageyama-kun’s inky black bangs are cut flat across his forehead. Where the rest of the class seems to have warmed up to Tobio—the little girl in the front row even looks him in the eye now—he hasn’t changed expressions at all, not once the entire time, but something seems rushed or pressured when he asks this of Tobio, before Suga could so much as get the -<em>ma</em> of his name out loud.</p><p>“Kageyama-senshu’s already grown up, Kageyama-kun,” Suga corrects him.</p><p>“But old men don’t play volleyball,” says Kageyama-kun, and the class of students start to laugh again, this time a little different, more knowing and less kind and closer to the classroom Tobio had been in in second grade.</p><p>“Sure, they do,” Tobio says, decisively—<em>wait,</em> he thinks, <em>er, hold on, there’s a better way to say this</em>. “They usually coach, or work as an athletic trainer. If you’re watching a match on television, you might see where the team’s staff stand off-court. They give their all to the match, just like the players do.”</p><p>Sugawara nods at this in an encouraging way that none of Tobio’s teachers ever nodded at one of the answers he gave in their classes as a student, but before he can move on and ask the rest of the kids if there’s any more questions, Kageyama-kun’s hand jumps back up, stretching towards the ceiling.</p><p>“Yes, Kageyama-kun,” Suga points to him once more.</p><p>“Are you going to be a coach when you grow up?” Kageyama-kun asks, just as urgent as the first time.</p><p>Tobio blinks. He…doesn’t know? He’s never thought about it, doesn’t have a single idea if he could really handle doing something like that. Tobio doesn’t think this as a derision of his personal skill, just the sheer amount of skills a good coach has to be excellent at, with the whole of the team and their dynamics on his shoulders. Being vice-captain was one thing—Tobio knows that tactically, technically, his direction could be valuable to players like his underclassmen, who had decent receive posture but could do better, who had alright serves but could swing with more accuracy. But then he thinks of Hibarida-san coaching the National Team and Suzaku-san coaching the Adlers, the direction they can give so succinctly and so right in a way that even Tobio never would have considered. He thinks of Ukai-san, too, how he always knew what to say, and to who, and when they needed to hear it to bring out the best in their play. He thinks of his coaches from middle school, elementary school, from the rec center and from summer camps. He thinks of Kazuyo.</p><p>“No,” Tobio replies. “Probably not.”</p><p>He can tell that Suga’s opened his mouth, somewhere out of the corner of Tobio’s eye, but he’s not given enough time to fill the short-lived silence that extends after his answer. “Why not?” asks—demands— Kageyama-kun. </p><p>Tobio shrugs, and says, honestly, “I don’t know if I would be able to do everything a coach has to do. They have to balance a lot, and the whole team relies on them for a lot of things beyond just game sense, or just technique. Like every great player, every coach has to be well-rounded, too.” He doesn’t know if that was a good enough answer this time, but he doesn’t have much more to say about it, and when Tobio nods at Kageyama-kun, Kageyama-kun nods back.</p><p>Kageyama-kun also must have noticed Suga’s cautionary glances; this time he actually raises his hand and waits for Suga to point to him before he grips the corners of his desk and stands up. “Will you coach my team if we get really good one day?” he nearly shouts.</p><p>Suga brings a finger to his mouth. “Kageyama-kun, what did we say about—"</p><p>“Where do you play?” asks Tobio.</p><p>“Here at school!” Kageyama-kun exclaims, wringing his hands on the bottom of his shirt. “Or if you don’t want to coach, you could come try to play a game with us! We have cheers, but we can show you them so you don’t feel left out!”</p><p>It’s a weird feeling in the room after that. Maybe no one knows what to say now. Suga’s head his cocked, curiously, and the students seem to look back and forth, to Kageyama, to Tobio, to Kageyama, to Tobio. Something’s clutching Tobio’s shirt, maybe. Prodding him down the hall, under the awning between the academic building and the gymnasium where the floor is still made out of wood. Kageyama-kun is trying to invite Tobio to his favorite place, and Tobio knows the feeling: where else is his favorite place supposed to be, exactly?</p><p>“That sounds fun,” Tobio says, just as honest as he’s been, and for the first time, Kageyama-kun’s entire face seems to ignite. “I’ll look forward to it.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(There’s a gap here, in Tobio’s memory, as far as what happens next.)</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “You’re joking, right? Gone and demoted yourself to Court Jester, maybe? It’s been <em>four days</em>. Yachi thinks you’re dead. What, The King has been even remotely inconvenienced and now he can’t be bothered to check his phone? I bet you don’t even know where your phone is. You’re probably going to get this message too late because you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself, alone, like an <em>imbecile</em> who doesn’t even know where his phone is. Don’t call me back, maybe try returning the calls of literally any of the people who gave enough of a shit to check in with you this week. Like, come <em>on</em>. It’s not like you’re dying. Moron.”</p>
<hr/><p>Did you know that crows hold funerals?</p><p>Hoshiumi told him this once, in the back of the Adlers bus on their way to a (Game? Scrimmage? Practice?). If the route took them far enough, Ushijima would pull out his laptop to watch a documentary of some kind, so long as Hoshiumi or Tendou hadn’t recommended him some anime that Tobio’d never heard of, but would find himself watching over Ushijima’s shoulder nonetheless. Tobio doesn’t remember what the documentary in question was on this particular day, just that Hoshiumi is the type of person to know an unusual amount about birds, that Ushijima is the type of person to know what countries you should leave a tip after your meal in, and Tobio is the type of person to know that tight ponytails cause breakage, not because it’s important to him, but because he’d been told once or twice and it had stuck.</p><p>“Yeah, so when a crow dies,” Hoshiumi started, leaning over the back of his seat to include Tobio from the row behind himself and Ushijima, “their families fly to the body—"</p><p>“Do crows have families?” Tobio had interrupted.</p><p>“Yes! Sometimes up to fifteen members! Usually made up of two parents and all the babies they have season after season,” Hoshiumi replies quickly. “<em>Anyway</em>, they all show up to grieve their dead crow, but then other crows will show up, sometimes in the hundreds.”</p><p>“That seems hazardous,” Ushijima says, “given they’re known to meddle in electrical structures.”</p><p>“Probably, but the weirdest thing is they’ll like, show up and circle the body, but no one will touch it. They’ll all just stare at it,”Hoshiumi tells them, wide-eyed, but much like the Italians, he ultimately says more in gesture.</p><p>Tobio’s eyes narrow at the way Hoshiumi’s hand becomes bird-shaped, starts to flutter away only to fall, splat, against the back of his bus seat. “Weird,” he says.</p><p>“I thought so too, but some scientists think it’s a grief thing, like we do,” Hoshiumi says, like he knows something they don’t. But, but. “But others think it’s more of a sort of risk assessment? A kind of ‘he died doing this, so I shouldn’t do that’ sort of thing.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>On Thursday, Tobio wakes up to the sound of hushed giggling and the rip of tearing, tearing, torn plastic during what must (might) be late afternoon.</p><p>He’s feeling somewhere between a three and two, maybe, and takes his time to toss his covers to the side and move himself toward the edge of the bed, sitting up. From here, Tobio mostly just waits and listens to what must be the loudest attempt of staying quiet that there’s ever been while the muscles of his face tighten and wrinkle, tighten and wrinkle. Tobio can’t tell how many people are out there or who, by the footsteps or the hushed whispers, they’re supposed to be. He could decipher between Miwa and Hinata when it was just one or the other, but this is hard mode, this is what must be at least four or five people, inconsistent in how they bounce on their toes and shift their weight across the floorboards. Maybe he’s imagining things? No. Maybe his parents are here early. Tobio stiffens at the thought. Maybe his apartment’s been broken into. He could pretend to be dead, if it’s really his couch they want. Maybe it’s Asada Mao. Maybe it's Miwa and Hinata. Maybe they’re friends now. </p><p><em>No</em>, says something deep inside Tobio at that thought. <em>No way.</em></p><p>“Oi,” says Tobio, aloud.</p><p>The noise comes to a rolling sort of stop—there’s a gasp and there’s talking, but it’s murmuring, hissing. Before Tobio can really hear enough of it to recognize one or two words, the collective trundling of feet across the floor altogether string up a few clues. Someone’s on their tip-toes, maybe two someones. Someone’s not bothering to stay stealthy at all. And someone’s definitely Hinata.</p><p>Tobio throws his feet over the side of his bed and when the door opens, he finds at least one of his guesses confirmed.</p><p>“Kageyama! You’ll never guess what I found!” Hinata exclaims, albeit in a whisper. “Oh, look, you even opened a window—wait, before everything, how are you feeling?”</p><p>Hinata’s blue under the eyes, Tobio finds first, and the rest of his face is shaded by something worn and washed out. Maybe he hadn’t slept well, maybe he’s not eating right, maybe it’s both and a little of something else, too, but Tobio isn't sure what. Hinata doesn’t always seem like he’d be the kind of person to keep strict to his health and his routines (this is because he comes off as an idiot, Tobio clarifies for no one in particular), so it only becomes all the more obvious when Hinata looks, well, wrong. <em>He looks like something’s been taken out of him,</em> Tobio thinks, where he'd usually know. He'd usually know. “What’s wrong with you?” is what he barks.</p><p>Hinata only scoffs in return, folding his arms like it’s somehow Tobio who’s the idiot here. “Nothing’s wrong, it’s just a small, tiny, itty-bitty surprise, Touchy-yama.”</p><p>“No, I meant you.” Tobio considers, also, how froggy Hinata sounds, the way his back seems to slump under the light of the hallway. “What did you <em>do</em>?”</p><p>“Nothing, <em>sheesh</em>,” Hinata feigns, turning towards something, a few somethings, standing beside him, but otherwise out of the doorframe and out of sight. “<em>Someone</em> decided they hate fun and joy this afternoon, so you guys can just probably come out now.”</p><p>Before Kageyama can so much as question what’s going on, Hinata slides out of the way, making plenty of room for Yamaguchi to peer around the doorframe, expectant.</p><p><em>Ah</em>, Tobio thinks, rubbing his eyes to make sure he has this right.</p><p>Then comes Yachi, also expectant, wearing a sheet mask.</p><p><em>Okay</em>.</p><p>And then comes Tsukishima, less expectant, bored even, also wearing a sheet mask. </p><p>
  <em>Ew.</em>
</p><p>There’s an awkward moment where Tobio realizes that he’s doing little else than stare at such a collection of people, of old teammates standing in his doorway, all while they stare back and wait for him to say something.</p><p>Anything.</p><p>Tobio clears his throat.</p><p>“Hi.” </p><p>He’s met with some sort of soft-spoken <em>hi-hello</em>-grunting sounds from the trio and from Hinata, who still looks tired even while he beams, awful proud of himself.</p><p>"What are you," Tobio whispers, muddled, disoriented. “What are you all doing?”</p><p>Yamaguchi rolls his eyes, however fondly, before he shout-whispers across the room. “Can we come in? It’s okay if you’re tired!” Still swept up in the<em> Ah! Okay!</em> of seeing—not just people he knows, but these people in particular—Tobio shrugs and nods his affirmative at the same time.</p><p>Yachi enters the room first and takes short, quick steps all the way up to Tobio’s bed before turning around to drag up with her the chair from the corner to sit on. Then, she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and claims one of Tobio’s hands in both of hers, slightly and dry and cold. Tobio thinks he has something in his medicine cabinet for this, because he hates playing with dry hands. Tobio also might think she’s preparing to say something important or terrified or both, but with her bangs pulled back in a little star-shaped clip and the face mask and everything, she mostly looks a little silly.</p><p>“Hi, Kageyama-kun,” she whispers.</p><p>“Hi.”</p><p>He can tell she’s looking right at the bruise, eyeing it’s recovery when Yachi asks “Are you feeling okay? How have things been?”</p><p>“I’m okay, right now. It’s been,” Tobio is forced to pause by the events of the last twenty-four hours. The white countertop. His shaking hands. The red of his blood streaking both as he explains, explains. “Up and down,” he answers. “But my sister has been around in case I need help, and Hinata keeps inviting himself over, so—”</p><p>Hinata sputters, overdone and exaggerated. “I know he didn’t just say what I think he said,” he says to Yamaguchi, who only repeats what Tobio just said.</p><p>“That’s good to hear! I just wanted to say that I,” Yachi frowns before she bows, forehead to the sheets, and runs the rest of her sentence into one, muffled “oweyouan apology.”</p><p>Tobio blinks at the back of Yachi’s blonde head of hair. “What for?”</p><p>“Tsukishima and Hinata said you weren’t going to use the masks from the gift bag, and they were very convincing,” she explains, slowly straightening her back out once more to offer him a weak grimace. “So I stole one too.”</p><p>“That’s okay.” He’d forgotten, admittedly, that there’d been masks amongst his gifts from the National Team, let alone where the bag had been taken beyond the four walls of his room. “I wasn’t going to really use them anyway.”</p><p>“You mean it? I’ll get you new ones if you change your mind.”</p><p>“I mean it.”</p><p>Yachi puts a hand to her heart and exhales. “<em>Whew</em>, that’s good news. Thank you for sharing them with us.”</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>“I’m ready to tell you what I came here to tell you now.”</p><p>Tobio waits for her to proceed, feeling his own jaw drop a little in horror as he watches Yachi take another deep breath and transition into a look and tone that Tobio knows best as Yachi, Head Manager. Yachi, Head Manager, who could corral twelve or so high school boys as well as two managers-in-training into a reasonable amount of obedience with the clap of her hands, has something to say to him, which he couldn’t possibly guess, which he already thinks is a little unfair. He can’t outrun the manager voice, and she’s still got hold of his hand in hers, so there’s no escape. “Kageyama-kun,” she starts, and Tobio’s already nodding in earnest apology. “It’s very important that you never do this to me again.”</p><p>Tobio keeps nodding before he can stop and think to ask: “Do what?”</p><p>In return, Yachi seems to mull it over herself, biting her lip as she runs through what appears to be a laundry list of offenses. “Get injured,” she whispers.</p><p>Tobio hums, and after a short pause, replies, “I will do my best.” Yachi seems satisfied enough with this answer that she squeezes his hand affectionately and lets it go completely this time. “Did you really come all the way here just to tell me that?” he asks.</p><p>“As if,” Tsukishima mutters, wiping a long finger along the top of Tobio’s dresser and checking it over for dust. Like a bastard, as usual. “Can’t three friends just plan a weekend in Tokyo? Maybe stop by a fireworks festival?”</p><p>“It’s supposed to rain all weekend,” says Hinata.</p><p>“<em>And</em> we came to see The World Traveller before he leaves the country again in two weeks,” Yamaguchi pipes in, sliding an elbow to rest on Hinata’s shoulder, though Hinata’s shaking his head, saying something like <em>“I was already supposed to go up to Sendai to see my parents, next week—"</em></p><p>“Um, also, my birthday’s coming up?” Yachi adds, however unconvincing.</p><p>“In a month?” Tsukishima says.</p><p>“So they’re here to celebrate with me!”</p><p>“Happy Birthday, Yacchan,” says Tobio.</p><p>“And <em>so,</em> we figured, between all the sights and the celebrating, we should check in on our favorite vice-captain!” Yamaguchi concludes ceremoniously, folding his arms with some sense of pride.</p><p>Tsukishima hums a sour note at that. “Suga lives in Miyagi.”</p><p>Tobio looks toward Hinata at the same time Hinata looks toward him, and he can tell they’re thinking the same thing— maybe they’re wrong, but Tobio suspects he is being lied to by all three of his visitors (except Tsukishima, because he’s a bastard). And it’s sad on their end that <em>he</em> can tell, Tobio’s ready to admit, but it’s also okay. This is good. This is. One of the best things that’s happened to him this week. And however put-off he might ordinarily be by the unexpected surprise, he finds that he’s really happy to see them, his murder from Karasuno, in a way that pokes his face and pats his head and demands he do his best.</p><p>“Thank you,” Tobio starts here because he knows, technically, that this is the right thing to say when regular people receive help or good will. However, “I don’t know why you bothered with the trouble,” he continues, and much to his surprise, this time everyone else in the room just about lets their eyes roll into the back of their heads.</p><p>“Maybe because we haven’t heard anything from you since Sunday,” Yamaguchi points out, with the authority of Ennoshita and Sawamura before him, that sends a jolt down Tobio’s spine; before Hinata can nod in agreement, Yamaguchi sets his glare on him too. “And you’re just as bad.”</p><p>Where Hinata musters all of his energy—all of it—to look insulted, Tobio finds himself misunderstanding. “You called me?”</p><p>“See, I knew it,” Tsukishima says to Yachi and to Yamaguchi, with only malice in the smirk he directs square at Tobio. “I bet you don’t even know where it is, do you?”</p><p>Tobio glares back, glares with all of his spite—all of it—before he really thinks about where his phone is and is forced to shake his head, denying any knowledge about where it could possibly be.</p><p>“It’s in your bag, bag’s by the front door.” Miwa’s standing in the hall, looking the way she might if she, say, had stepped out for a grand total of twenty minutes before returning to find Karasuno Volleyball Club’s Graduating Class of 2015 standing and arguing around what, frankly, is not a large room. “No,” she says, reading Tobio’s mind, specifically, “this was not technically part of the doctor’s orders.”</p><p>Where Yamaguchi takes it upon himself to apologize to Miwa on behalf of their group and Tsukishima and his face mask are peeking out the window upon Tobio’s view of Bunkyo, Yachi appears to have broken into a light sweat. “Yacchan-san, are you okay?” Hinata leans over the chair and asks her quietly, though she doesn’t stir, like she's approaching a small, frightened animal, or like she is the small, frightened animal, being approached. “You don’t look so good again.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m fine,” Yachi says like she’s said this same exact thing to Hinata while looking straight at Miwa before. “Kageyama-kun,” she shifts, abrupt, “your sister was super nice about letting us in. Are you two close? What’s she like?”</p><p>“Um,” Tobio has to really think about it. It strikes him that he doesn’t get asked about Miwa very often. “She’s pretty hardcore. When we were growing up, she used to beat me at everything.”</p><p>Hinata’s face immediately contorts at this, painted in layers of insult, fear, and disgust. “<em>She</em> beat <em>you</em>?”</p><p>“I’m sure that has everything to do with her personal level of talent and nothing to do with the fact that she’s much older than you and subsequently had stronger motor skills, more experience, so on and so forth,” says Tsukishima from the window, while Hinata continues to mutter to himself, something like <em>‘I had no idea…what’s higher than a king?’</em></p><p>If Yamaguchi is as intimidated by Miwa as most everyone else in the room, he handles it with the grace of a true captain; she’s grinning and nodding at something he’s said before she turns to the rest of the group and asks, less perceptive and critical than she ordinarily might’ve, “So are you all staying here or…?”</p><p>“Ah no, Tsukishima and I got a rental, actually,” Yamaguchi replies.</p><p>“Nice, what part of the city are you guys in?” Hinata asks, turning towards Yachi, likely assuming the same thing as Tobio, that she and her conscientiousness and anxiety worked on the plans.</p><p>“Oh, I actually have no idea, I didn’t help them plan a thing, other than a meet-up spot at the train station,” she says, self-effacing, twirling the end of her ponytail. “Tsukki planned everything, right?”</p><p>The silence that follows is severe and deadly. Their murder collectively turn towards Tsukishima, no longer casual, but rigid and hunched against the dresser, now that he’s been caught. His eyes narrow, as he meets each of their gazes, his expression growing in disgust as he moves from Miwa to Yachi to Yamaguchi, peaking with Hinata and Tobio.</p><p>“Stop that,” he demands with the curl of his nose. “Stop it now.”</p><p>“<em>Tsukishimaaa</em>,” Hinata breaks the silence first, opening his arms up as he starts to inch towards Tsukishima. “Bring it in, Big Guy.”</p><p>Tsukishima, conversely, seems to shrink in on himself, folding his arms into his core as he searches for a way out. “Absolutely not, stop that now,” he commands as he scurries around the perimeter of the room and towards the doorway.</p><p>“So you <em>do</em> love us!”</p><p>“Knowing you is a <em>chore</em>!”</p><p>Unfortunate for Tsukishima, Hinata is quite fast.</p>
<hr/><p>Some time a few years before their long walk home, Tobio tells his most successful lie.</p><p>He is four years old, plodding out of his kiddie volleyball class at the local rec center. He’s not lost, technically, but he has to walk the four walls of the lobby, past parents picking up their children, past stray gym bags lining the border of the room, and the soda machines before he finds the people he’s looking for, sitting on a bench, right beside the door he came out through.</p><p>Kazuyo greets him like he hadn’t been watching from out of bounds the entire time, the same way he greets Tobio every time he comes out of practice. “Well, did we win?” he asks, cheerful, as he hands Tobio his water bottle and his jacket.</p><p>Tobio, altogether very small, nods fervently.</p><p>Miwa, altogether very much at that age where she needs to be right all the time, squints at the phone she’s furiously typing into. “His team didn’t win,” she tells Kazuyo at a whisper.</p><p>“I know, Miwa-chan,” Kazuyo whispers back.</p><p>“They lost by five,” she confirms. “And they only play to ten points.”</p><p>“The numbers on the scoreboard don’t always determine who’s <em>really</em> won,” Kazuyo says this mostly to Tobio, who can’t figure out how to get the top flap of his water bottle open at present.</p><p>“But they do, Kazuyo-san. They literally do. The winner is the one who gets the most points first.”</p><p>“You are right, Miwa-chan.” But. But. “Sometimes, and especially when you are this <em>small</em> and <em>cute</em>,” Kazuyo reaches out here to pinch the side of Tobio’s round face until he smiles, just a little, “to try is to win, right, Tobio? Did you have fun?”</p><p>Tobio nods.</p><p>“I disagree,” says Miwa.</p><p>“I know, Miwa-chan.”</p>
<hr/><p>Yamaguchi likes go-arounds, enough that their bolder kouhai jokingly compared him to some kind of over-eager camp counselor before they’d been met with Tobio’s watchful and intimidating vice-captain glares. The connection had stuck with him, though, and he thinks about it every time Yamaguchi tries the same thing, even now, getting everyone in his immediate proximity to go around and answer a simple enough question or prompt. Today’s go-around is current concerns.</p><p>(Leading by example, Yamaguchi goes first: one of his coworkers keeps warming up fish in the microwave and no one in the office can find out who. He and a few of the neighboring cubicles have been playing this strange game of <em>Cluedo</em> for weeks.)</p><p>(Yamaguchi points to Tobio next. Tobio’s current concern is a given.)</p><p>As is most typical of crows of their type, Tobio finds out that Yamaguchi and Tsukishima decided they would come to Tokyo for risk assessment yesterday afternoon. Yachi was informed first, as this trip was partially for her and her state of mind, partially for their own interest in some of the late summer festivals freckling the city. After a few hours of insisting it wasn’t necessary (until she'd been reminded of the festival food stall treats likely abound), she roped Hinata in on the plot sometime last night, who informed Miwa about an hour and a half ago. Subsequently, upon the group’s arrival, Miwa dipped out to take Tobio’s wallet to the corner store for snacks and some semblance of real food while Hinata and The Band, as she describes them, waited for him to wake up.</p><p>Tobio scoffs at this, though he ultimately doesn’t care that she’d used his money; Miwa only scoffs back. “They’re your guests,” she says. “They shouldn’t be forced to eat like monks just because you do.”</p><p>(Miwa’s current concern is that Tobio’s stock of very bland, athlete-approved foods is running low, and the protein bars still sitting in his pantry are fucking gross.)</p><p>Making everyone else sit in the dark, black box of his bedroom was decided as unsustainable for the majority, but that coming all this way to have Tobio sit by himself away from all the excitement didn’t seem fair either, so it’s lucky that between the six of them, a solution is found soon enough. This is how Tobio is able to join them all for meat buns and beer from a chair, left in the dark hallway, shaded from the sun, with sunglasses and a baseball cap on. They’ll leave as soon as he asks or is too tired to keep up, Yachi promises, scooting closer to him the chair that he’ll use to keep his left leg propped up at its most comfortable angle. Tobio only nods back, but he can’t imagine, at this point, asking.</p><p>(Yachi’s current concern before their get-together had been turning on the news to find out that Tobio had died. Now it’s probably that she’d been thinking recently about moving on from the design company she’s currently employed at, but she doesn’t remember how to format a CV.)</p><p>(Tobio’s new current concern is that he also doesn’t know how to format a CV.)</p><p>This is, save the ice pack and the sunglasses and the blanket Yamaguchi tucked around his shoulders to make him look “extra-regal”, feels normal, and if Tobio doesn’t move, he’s sure he can keep feeling this way. It’s admittedly more action and adventure than his apartment usually contains and more hosting than Tobio’s ever done in his life but it’s. It’s a two, almost a one. It’s that good, lung-constricting feeling in his chest, again, the same sort of feeling he might get after a good play. Hanging out with the people he knows best is the same as a good play, and the work that it takes to sit here and see how long it takes for him to get tired or get a headache is something they make him feel ready to try, anyway. If nothing else, he knows they won’t be offended if he doesn’t say much from his corner of the room.</p><p>But Tobio will be offended if Tsukishima keeps this—whatever it is he’s doing—up.</p><p>“If you have something to say, just say it,” he nearly snarls at Tsukishima where he stands, tucked in the very corner of the living room with his typical look of judgment as everyone else seems to find their place without being a shithead about it.</p><p>Tsukishima, however repelled, remains frank. “I was going to say that maybe <em>someone</em> could stand to get some real furniture in here, but honestly, His Royal Highness looks a little too much like a dog with no teeth for me to feel okay about adding any commentary.”</p><p>“Do you normally feel okay about the things you say?” Yachi asks like she’s not really asking at all.</p><p>“Do you normally feel?” Hinata asks, in much the same way.</p><p>“A dog with no teeth is pretty apt, actually,” Yamaguchi says with a shrug, eyeing Tobio in a way that makes him run his tongue over his teeth. Not to check to see if he still has them, but because he’s suddenly very uncomfortable by any comparison suggesting that he has no teeth at all. </p><p>(Like a liar, Tsukishima insists that his current concern is that he’s going to have to start getting in shape for the V. League season again and that playing for a Division 1 team is way more serious than playing for a Division 2 team.)</p><p>(Hinata points out that Tsukishima should take this more seriously—he could make the National Team this year and go to the Olympics, if he tried.)</p><p>(Tsukishima says no one makes the National Team after two seasons playing Division 1 volleyball.)</p><p>(Hinata says that both he and Kageyama were named to the National Team after their respective rookie seasons—one year, instead of two.)</p><p>(Tsukishima’s current concern is making/not making the National Team.)</p><p>Hinata is explaining his current concern—“if you had like, a really cool and wise and worldly older brother, wouldn’t he be the first person you go to for dating advice?” “Akiteru is absolutely the last person I would go to for advice, period, but go on”— when Yachi gasps, chokes a little on her beer, then gasps worried again as she looks up at Yamaguchi and Tsukishima where she’s been cross-legged on the floor beside Tobio's chair set-up.</p><p>“Where’s the gift?” she whispers, despite the fact they are all already more or less speaking in hushed tones, and hides her mouth with her hand to keep Tobio from seeing. “We didn’t forget it, did we?”</p><p>Tobio is about to insist they didn’t need to bring one when Hinata laughs, “why would you think you need one for <em>him</em>, at this point?” so Tobio mostly squints in his direction, disapproving, instead.</p><p>But Yamaguchi shakes his head, altogether much more lax about Yachi's concerns. “It’s fine," he says, pointing back across the coffee table towards teh couch. "Tsukki took care of that too.”</p><p>Tsukishima, however, doesn’t look up. He doesn’t move. Tobio watches Tsukishima stay, otherwise, very still except for his eyes, which look everywhere except anywhere good. “We forgot the gift,” he says into the neck of his beer bottle.</p><p>“You said you had it on the train,” Yamaguchi insists with a scoff.</p><p>But Tsukishima sinks with a little give there is further into the cushions of the couch. “I don’t think it’s a good idea anymore,” he says, a mumble, a mutter.</p><p>“<em>Tsukki</em>—”</p><p>“His bag’s still over by the front door,” Hinata points out, jumping up to go grab it of his own volition before Tsukishima all but drags him back down to the couch by his shirt.</p><p>“I said,” he repeats, pointedly—and uncharacteristically, rather embarrassed, “that I don’t think it’s a good idea to share it anymore.”</p><p>His resolve doesn’t last, of course. For being such a know-it-all, Tsukishima should know better than to tease something shiny and unknown and expect it to go unscavenged. Miwa disappears from behind the bar of the kitchen counter to point out Tsukishima’s backpack to Hinata where it lies on the tile and then doesn’t reappear, watching from the sink as he makes Tsukishima bargain for it’s contents. Where everyone else seems ready to know what ‘it’ is in the first place, Tobio, ever the setter, notices the apprehension when Tsukishima announces he’ll hand off the gift himself, huffing and sulking all the way.</p><p>“You’ve never had any bite,” Tsukishima says, dropping a crumpled newspaper in Tobio’s lap. “But I thought you’d have at least a little more bark.”</p><p>The top headline in bold, black ink, is enough for all of Tobio’s good cheer to dissipate on impact: <em>LONG LIVE THE KING. </em></p><p>Tobio shakes his head. “I don’t want this.”</p><p>“Wait, now hold on.” Tsukishima, for all his height and long limbs, finds a way to fold cross-legged between Tobio’s chairs, otherwise facing the bridge his bad leg makes. “Open it.”</p><p><em>LONG LIVE THE KING, </em>Tobio doesn’t read this over and over again as much as it echoes. <em>LONG LIVE THE KING. </em>“No,” he replies. </p><p>“I mean it. It’s all nice things. Really.”</p><p>Tobio swallows. “I don’t want it.”</p><p>If this is something meant to pass as concern or worry, Tsukishima doesn't explain himself, not when he rolls his eyes, taking the paper from Tobio’s lap to open it up and spread it out across the floor himself. Yamaguchi and Yachi, from where they’d been on the couch and around the coffee table, edge toward the multi-color spectacle, the panorama of Tobio’s career, if not described in the tiny text running top to bottom, then in the photographs that divide the lines. Tobio can see from here a number of the obvious ones—the 2016 and 2021 National Team photos, his cover for <em>VolleyWorld</em>, the support poster that hangs forever at the bus stop closest to where he’d grown up. </p><p>“This is,” Yachi slides one of the folded pages out between its neighbors, in awe. “This is <em>all</em> of it. Kageyama’s entire career?”</p><p>“It’s my own fault,” Yamaguchi apologizes to him. “When Tsukki said he’d had the gift taken care of, I really believed him.”</p><p>If Miwa is planning on coming back in from the kitchen at any point, she doesn’t. And if Hinata is still in the room, Tobio wouldn’t know, not from where he bends at the neck to look over Tsukishima’s shoulders and slides off his sunglasses, the top of his ball cap keeping out everything in the room that isn’t the newspaper.</p><p>“Look, Your Majesty, here they call you a ‘National Hero’. Over here, ‘one of the greatest athletic talents in recent history’, before they even go on to list some of your grand achievements.” Tobio watches as Tsukishima traces a long, thin finger across the ink, finding the section he’d probably kept highlighted only in the back of his own mind. “Three-time V. League Champion, two-time Italian Superlega Champion, two-time FIVB World Cup ‘Best Setter’ award, FIVB Club World Championship gold medalist, FIVB World Cup, World League, and Olympic medalist—"</p><p>“What’s your point?” Tobio cuts him off there, knowing there’s more, maybe, probably. </p><p>“Oh, but I’m only just getting started,” Tsukishima so much as confirms, but with more of his usual derision than continuing achievements. “Seriously, this journalist was thorough—”</p><p>“Your point—”</p><p>“My point is, well,” he stops, waits until he knows Tobio is looking at him, at least gives him that much before he says, challenges, “couldn’t you stop now, all things considered?”</p><p>All things considered, Tobio does stop now. His breathing stops. His thinking stops. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. He just stares, probably pouting, at the newspaper. Kageyama’s National Team portrait stares back, impassive.</p><p>“I mean it. What’s left for you? You had the kind of career that takes up nearly half of today’s Sports section.” Tsukishima flips through the corners of the remaining pages, pulling them up and out of order, passing them around. Tobio can tell by the glare of Tsukishima’s eyes that this is as close to concern as he’s ever truly mustered on his behalf. “Was eight years not enough Pocari Sweat and finger tape for you? Or did you just forget that you’d have to stop playing one day and never bothered to come up with a back-up plan?”</p><p>Tobio’s throat closes up, rather than pave a path to look at things Tsukishima’s way. It’s not that he was as stupid as suggested and didn’t so much as understand, conceptually, that his competitive volleyball career would end one day. He just thought he had more time, would’ve at least known that his final season was, in fact, final, as he tried to decide what exactly he might move on to next before he had to say goodbye.</p><p>“Tsukki, you’ve gotta lighten up.” Yamaguchi has a hand to his face, the bridge of his nose between his fingers, as Tobio considers an ideal final season where he gets the whole shebang—a real, final match, that he wins, only to wake up the next day and move on to— and move on to— and move on to—</p><p>“No, wait, I think he has a point,” Yachi says, thoughtfully, and everyone turns to look towards her like it was her due as manager, quiet, listening. “Not that Kageyama should just stop, or anything—”</p><p>“No, that’s kind of what I’m saying,” says Tsukishima.</p><p>“But that if you were to stop now, you would find that you did enough, and could be satisfied. Maybe even feel like it's okay to try new things,” Yachi squares up on her knees, says this straight to Tobio; she knows, understands, he thinks, the parts of this that are simple and the parts of this that just aren't. “Kageyama-kun, is there anything you've ever wanted to do that you couldn't because you were too busy with volleyball?"</p><p>When Tobio says nothing, can't think of a single thing he'd otherwise rather have spent his time on, the blanks are filled in with suggestions for him. </p><p>"Like learn an instrument," suggests Yamaguchi.</p><p>"Or learn literally any kind of useful skill," suggests Tsukishima, before he adds, "and travel."</p><p>"Or, or, grow a beard?" suggests Yachi.</p><p>"Like Romero-san," adds Hinata fantly.</p><p><em>Can I grow a beard?</em> Tobio's thinking to himself, considering the options laid before him, all things that he ultimately, could have done without being asked to give volleyball up. <em>I could have grown a beard during the season. </em></p><p>He shakes his head, firm, with a 'no'.</p><p>"Okay, well," Yachi pulls the page, the one Tsukki had been reading off of, closer to her, as she continues. "What about a sort of goal or achievement you hadn’t reached during your career up until this point? Maybe a certain award or title?”</p><p>Tobio considers this. Most of the medals or trophies he’d received for the achievements listed by Tsukishima, outside of the few he keeps shelved under his television, are sitting in a box at his parents’ house, if he had to guess where they might be at all—it’s with this in mind that he shakes his head, just as Tsukishima mutters: “Can you imagine? There being <em>anything</em> left?”</p><p>“No awards? No tournaments?” Yamaguchi presses on. "Nothing you still have to do?"</p><p>Tobio shrugs. "I still have to call the orthopaedic surgeon, and schedule my ACL surgery."</p><p>"I'm sorry, you still haven't <em>what</em>?" Miwa leans in from the kitchen, over the bar, shooting Tobio a glare that he ultimately ignores as he thinks and thinks harder. He knows he's been successful, and he’d always wanted to play well enough to get all those medals—wanted gold, every time—but not because he needed something to show for his efforts. Gold is just reserved for the best players, it’s that simple. “Well, it was never really about the medals. Or anything like that,” Tobio tells them—he’d wanted to be the best, play his best with and against other players at their best. Whatever his absolute peak was, he wanted to get there, wanted to see what it was like, but even underfoot such a climb is the desire to, first and foremost, “I just wanted to keep playing.”</p><p>No one seems to be shocked by this revelation; Tsukishima, for one, responds with one eyebrow pointing up where the other had pointed down, because Tobio had said exactly what he thought he would. Yachi and Yamaguchi, too, start to nod before he can finish his thought. Hinata is glancing out the glass pane of the balcony’s sliding door at a sun set more into the surrounding skyscrapers than into the sea.</p><p>“So you can honestly look me in the eye and tell me that you haven’t played your best volleyball already?” Tsukishima asks, blinks out any disbelief Tobio might think he sees in the lenses of his glasses. And as nondescript and noncommittal as the rest of his answers this evening, Tobio's response is just. That he. Doesn't know. Can't be sure. The newspaper certainly thinks he has. Tsukishima thinks/doesn't think/doesn't think he thinks he has. But in a slow, reluctant way, Tobio would have to confirm that he's only ever tried to give his very best, to shoot for gold, for the peak. </p><p>“But maybe," Tobio replies, a challenge played right back, "I wanted to keep trying."</p><p>Tsukishima’s upper lip curls, putting his whole face into an unimpressed scowl. “<em>Ugh</em>.”</p><p>“So rude,” Yamaguchi and Yachi tell him, at nearly the same time.</p><p>But Tsukishima is shaking his head, holding up a wary hand to stop them. “No, no, <em>no</em>. While I'm disgusted because I can pretend I’d pack it all up after a season like the King’s last in the V. League, at least, but unfortunately.” Tsukishima really is—it’s the same feeling that’d made him ready to hop one-footed out of the hospital—embarrassed. “I understand where he’s coming from.”</p><p>“My last V. League season?” Tobio asks, frowning, doing the necessary math, counting, subtracting. His last before Ali Roma, his only with Romero, the year he and his photo had been the center in the collection of athletes that drew up all the League advertisements. He frows. "But lost the championship that year.”</p><p>"To <em>me</em>," Hinata pipes up like hadn't been daydreaming just moments ago, puffed and evil.</p><p>“But you were so damn happy about it all. The whole season, even,” Tsukishima cringes.</p><p>“Was not.”</p><p>“Was too,” says Yachi.</p><p>“Was too,” says Yamaguchi.</p><p>“Was too,” says Miwa, faraway from the kitchen.</p><p>“Do you have a back-up plan?” Tobio turns to Tsukishima, who smirks immediately on impact.</p><p>“Please,” and he’s smug, so smug about it, “volleyball is my back-up plan. I still have a real job for half the year, remember?”</p><p>“No one made you keep that,” says Yamaguchi, and he’s right. When nothing in his contract with the Frogs and then the Hornets kept Tsukishima from working part-time in the off-season for, say, The Miyagi Museum of Art, he simply went home once his seasons were up and kept giving tours. He calls it his ‘work-life balance’. Yamaguchi says college fundamentally changed his brain chemistry and what he considers to be a normal balance between things he's passionate about and things he pretends not to be passionate about. Tsukishima says he just won’t do anything that he can’t have exactly how he wants it, exactly how he wants it to be.</p><p> “Hinata, what are you gonna do when you retire?” Tsukishima turns, craning his neck around in the direction of the couch to ask. </p><p>But Hinata's distracted again—leave it to him to gloat about one of his victories and then zone out when the conversation moved on—all of Hinata’s attention is on the sticker of his beer bottle, which he's slowly peeling off. “Wow, I dunno,” he says, dumbly, “I guess no matter what happens I’ll be pretty overwhelmed and I’ll have a good cry about it—”</p><p>Tsukishima rolls his eyes (and if you want to talk about faces that’ll get stuck this way or that). "<em>Gross</em>— I mean, what are you going to do for work when you retire?”</p><p>Hinata seems to bristle at the way Tsukishima says ‘for work’, like he’s really been told to ‘grow up’, much like Tobio does. But for everything he doesn’t know, Tobio is confident in the array of potential answers Hinata might have, as someone who has volleyball much like the way he’s always had volleyball, the way he’s known other people to have volleyball too. A ‘don’t talk like that, you’ll jinx me!’ like Heiwajima. A ‘it’s not over ‘til it’s over’ like Onigashira or a ‘I’ll find out after they drag me off the court’ like Bokuto. And who’s looking that far ahead, especially when their club season is about to start? Stupid Tsukishima.</p><p>“Oh,” says Hinata, simply. “I’ll coach.”</p><p>“Huh?” Tobio chokes.</p><p>“I already have a lot of experience from assistant-teaching in Rio and then the year I spent in Hitachi before that,” Hinata explains, holding the beer bottle between his knees as he folds the label a few times over, “so I have a few places I could get started at. Just a phone call away really.” Like it’s so simple, simple, simple—maybe Tobio has no grounds to pretend like he hadn’t known. He knew Hinata coached while training with a beach volleyball specialist, living down along the coasts of Hitachi after graduation. He knew Hinata coached in Rio with broken Portuguese and kids who ran circles around him, who’d been tottering around with volleyballs since they could totter. Tobio knew these things and it was on him that he’d never drawn the line in the sand, one that connected the things Hinata did, presumably, as a means to play volleyball, to the ways he actually played volleyball, to the things he might do when he could no longer play volleyball.</p><p>Maybe he feel sick about it because, well, the ways Tobio plays volleyball, he’d assumed, were more connected to how he’d get to keep playing volleyball than anything else. Maybe he only feels sick about it because Hinata answered so quickly. “You answered faster than I thought you would,” Tsukishima admits much in the same way.</p><p>But Hinata, strange and distant and unreadable, only shrugs, gestures vaguely, doesn’t make eye contact. <em>Unreadable? Hinata?</em> “Well, I guess I’ve been thinking about it more than usual lately. I just want to be ready.”</p><p><em>No, that’s not it,</em> Tobio thinks, bristling as his body tries to catch up and hold his stomach right-side up at the same time. <em>That’s not it at all.</em></p><p>And Tobio is ready, prepared to say (yell) as much, when Tsukishima cuts in, spun around to smirk at him once more. “See, even Hinata’s ready,” he says. “What’s your excuse?”</p><p>The sunglasses and ball cap aren’t enough, in the end, and the full-body exhaustion comes on quickly—1, 2, 3. One minute, he’s handling the light of the lamps, even without the sunglasses, just fine; the next, he doesn’t remember what his excuse to answer Tsukishima’s challenge was supposed to be before the flow of conversation can shift as Yachi tells them about an ad she saw of Bokuto in a magazine recently, modelling for Nike. Then he’s not paying attention, just sliding on the sunglasses, not even sure he was ever so happy, final year of V. League volleyball or not, not certain if he has a doctor to call about his knee or not. By the time he nears a four, it’s like all of the things he doesn’t know are Kageyama’s problems, not Tobio’s, in a world that exists only outside the walls of his apartment, away, away, a phone call away.<br/>
<br/>
Miwa appears out of the kitchen, Kappa Ebisen in hand, less like she can tell that he’s slowing down, but more like she has something to say or heart-to-heart about. “Aw, little,” she says where she stands, towers, pointing a toe to one of the photographs, presumably of him, one-eighty centimeters-plus, in the newspaper still spread out across the floor. “I didn’t know you had the same number in high school as you keep for the National Team,” she notes.</p><p>Tobio folds over again too, slower and thicker this time, seeing Miwa’s socked foot gently tap one of the many photographs that litter the pages. It comes to him fast, he finds, the recollection of being in high school. The color, the shape, the tempo are all familiar—it’s Kageyama and it’s Hinata and it’s the freak quick, the first of however many times it might be photographed in any old competition in Tokyo.</p><p>“You were also Number 10 in high school, Hinata-kun?” Miwa asks, curiously.</p><p>He doesn’t know how he’ll do it, but when Hinata makes eye contact with Tobio before answering Miwa’s question, Tobio thinks it’s as good a time as any to communicate telepathically, psychically, like freaks, like monsters: <em>what’s the matter with you?</em> “Yup!” Hinata doesn’t hear. “The first years used to get the last four jerseys. So Yamaguchi was Number 12, Tsukishima was Number 11, I was Number 10, and Kageyama-kun was Number 9.”</p><p>“So did you keep those numbers for the National Team intentionally?”</p><p>Hinata nods. “I thought it’d be funny!”</p><p>Miwa looks less amused. “Interesting,” she says, retracting her foot from the paper. Once Hinata is successfully busied by Yamaguchi and Tsukishima and Yachi about plans for tomorrow, where they’ll meet and when and for what, Miwa uses the same foot to kick the foot Tobio doesn’t have elevated.</p><p>“You’re just like Mom,” she hisses while he gawks. “Exactly like Mom.”</p><p>That shocks some life back into him, however unfair; Tobio can all but make some defeated noise in insult<em>. “Huh?”</em></p><p>“You literally never tell me anything important until it’s not important anymore, and for what?”</p><p><em>This is unfair</em>, is the only thing he has energy left to think. <em>How untrue, </em>which he takes back just as soon as he thinks it, to replace it with, <em>How unfair.</em> “You don’t make any sense.”</p><p>“I don’t make any sense. <em>I </em>don’t make any sense.” Miwa shakes her head, holding up the bag in her hand to rattle it in his face. “You had Kappa Ebisen this <em>whole time</em>.”</p>
<hr/><p>“I’m not avoiding the surgery.”</p><p>Yachi squeezes his hands before they leave, but no one, not Tsukishima, not Hinata, lingers once he says he's tired. A few rounds of goodbyes and goodnights later, guarantees that he'll have visitors to check-in tomorrow before they see the city and food tent okonomiyaki after the festival if he wants it, and then it’s just Tobio, just Miwa, left in the quiet. He’s reaching to pick up the newspapers off the floor, knowing that he’ll end up keeping them, even if trying to read the print sounds like a most horrific punishment. The gingerly way he reaches for Kageyama's career, folds them neat, holds them close is proof.</p><p>“But I’m not ready for something else I can’t take back,” Tobio says, leaving his mouth open once he concludes—Miwa’s putting empty glasses in his sink and doesn’t stop long enough to do anything other than notice that he’s still trying to say something else. She does what she can; she gives him more time.</p><p>The problem isn’t so much time, right now; the problem is that he doesn’t want to sit with what he’ll say after it leaves his head and enters his living room with either of them.</p><p>“I wish,” Tobio takes a shallow breath, knowing he has to keep going now, even if once he starts, it will only get harder, “I wish Kazuyo was here.” </p><p>That gets Miwa to stop. In a way he’s rarely ever so sure, the way she whip-cracks her neck from across the bar to look at him gives it away. Because once she starts, it will only get harder. “Not that I’m still—” he goes to clarify, trying to avoid what it was he’d really felt when it’d happened. Desperate. Sad. “—in the same way as I did when he passed away. I just think if he’d seen any of what’s happened since.” A pause. “And said everything would be fine once I stopped,” playing. “And after I made the call and scheduled,” the surgery. “I could do it.”</p><p>The number of times Miwa has hugged Tobio after he’d grown too large to carry are limited to the week of Kazuyo’s funeral. They’ve never been like that, and he’s not trying for it again, not with this point he’s trying to make.</p><p>“I used to think the same way, about some things,” Miwa admits, the clink of glassware like twinkles around her words. “Like, ‘if Kazuyo was here, he’d know what to say and I would know what to do next’, or something like that. Right?”</p><p>Tobio nods.</p><p>“I take newspaper clippings of you to his shrine,” she says, frank. “So, he’s seen everything.”</p><p>“Everything?”</p><p>“Just about.”</p><p>“Since when?”</p><p>“Uh,” Miwa kind of pauses, halts here, counting backwards, “one of the years you went to Nationals? Maybe your third year, they called you by name in the headline. Mamorou-san wanted me to bring a paper from Tokyo home.”</p><p>So not. Not middle school, he thinks. But also not his first matches with the U19 team, or from Karasuno’s first two trips to Nationals. Tobio swallows. “Don’t they blow away?” is all he can think to ask.</p><p>“I’ve done it enough times now that I have a really effective system to keep them held down actually. It’s called a Pocari Sweat bottle, also on the altar. But that’s not the point,” Miwa waits, leans over the bar to watch him as she waits. “Ask me what my point is.”</p><p>“What is your point?”</p><p>“The point is that I don’t need Kazuyo the way that I think I do most of the time."</p><p><em>Shh,</em> says the breeze, beyond the walls of the apartment. <em>Shh. Shh.</em></p><p>“Because there’s always going to be a part of me that’s, I dunno, twelve and optimistic and never had to work a day in her life? Didn’t know anything about breakage so she wore tight pigtails all the time in blissful ignorance? Got to hang out with her grandpa every day and gets reminded every morning to, y’know, ‘look after your brother while we’re at work’. I think I still know her well enough to know that some part of Kazuyo's around with her, somewhere, and that even she knows the first thing he’d ask for if he came back, right now. Let alone what advice he’d give me for whatever stupid problem I’m losing sleep over these days. I just know.”</p><p>Tobio swallows again, as it’s all he’s able to do. “What would he ask for?”</p><p>“Oh come on, Tobio, what do you think?” He doesn’t know, Miwa, that’s why he asked. He doesn't know—“When you came to back in the hospital and I asked you what you remembered, what did you ask about?”</p><p>“The first thing.” It’s a haul, thinking back to the hospital room he remembers now by list more than feel—the lights, the blankets, the poster with the handwashing symbol. “The first thing I thought was that you looked like Dad.”</p><p>“What?” Miwa doesn’t shriek, necessarily, but startles like she’s seen something terrible and disgusting and not like she’s been told she looks like someone she looks like. “Why would you say that?”</p><p>“Sorry?”</p><p>“You could’ve said anyone else, and I’d give you a pass because you have a head injury—”</p><p>“After that I thought it was weird you were holding my hand,” Tobio continues, before the CT scan, after The Headache, the Netherlands Number Eight, and fentanyl.</p><p>“I can’t believe this, I do not, <em>I do not</em>—” Miwa’s head is against the counter, hands limp and defeated. “This is my worst nightmare, actually.”</p><p>“And then I asked if I died,” Tobio concludes.</p><p>“Okay fine,” Miwa’s strung out, overwhelmed maybe. There’s a point, remember. Something of Kazuyo’s is nearby. “I mean after that. Then what did you ask?”</p><p>Tobio’s strung out, too. And overwhelmed, his face is warm. He shakes his head. He’s shaking his head and continues to shake his head, but his hands find out first; he crumples the newspaper in his fists.</p><p>(Did we win?)</p><p>He’s not so desperately, desperately sad about this, like he once was, not in the same way. Even if he feels like he’s still there, sometimes, waiting for the service to start, hoping it will never start, wanting to just go home so bad—that’s not, as he understands himself, and maybe all the other hims he still is, too, what he’s thinking about right now.</p><p>He’s considering, mostly, some advice he’d been given recently.</p><p>“Thanks," he says, sobered.</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“No, Nee-san.” Tobio doesn’t have the gall, naturally, to look at his sister when he says as much. Neither of them do. “Thank you.”</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>Cutting him out of the paper. Taking Kazuyo Pocari Sweat. Being there when he'd woken up. “For always looking out for me.”</p><p>“Oh, shut up.” But Miwa sniffs. In the silence that draws out as the lights flick off, she comes closer to punch him in the arm, weak on impact, before she helps him to his feet and heads back to his room. She sniffs again. “Shut up.”</p>
<hr/><p>He can’t sleep now, now that he finds himself back in his bed, in the dark, the AC unit creating a freeze rather than the window, stay open.</p><p>Instead, Tobio thinks about what Hinata said to Tsukishima.</p><p>All he does, instead of counting sheep or being reasonable, for every waking second of the rest of his night, is think/think/think/think/think about what Hinata said. </p><p>He should’ve grabbed his bag while he had the chance, getting as far as the edge of the hallways earlier today. Not necessarily to check his messages, or to maybe schedule and important surgery, but because hindsight’s 20/20 now, and he’s wishing for something to write with and document his thoughts. It’s more effort to visualize it, even if he can, know how he’d scrawl out his thoughts on a page:</p><p>A timeline:</p><p>-Yesterday morning: “I’m not ready to stop playing.” </p><p>-Yesterday morning: Hinata AGREES (underlines, circles, circles, circles highlights)</p><p>-Today: Hinata looks like shit</p><p>-Today: Hinata tells Tsukishima he’s going to coach after he stops playing</p><p>-Today: “I just want to be ready”</p><p>“For what?” Tobio asks his bedroom ceiling, demands to know what he can't learn just by watching, reading, waiting to be told. “Ready for what?”</p>
<hr/><p>[New missed message] “Kageyama, it’s Kunimi. I need you to do me a big, big favor, okay? What I need you to do, once you’re up for it, is call Kindaichi and tell him you are fine. He’ll pretend like he hasn’t been shitting bricks for days, but he has been and it’s exhausting. You don’t have to call me back. You don’t even have to text. I’m sure I will hear about your status through Kindaichi, so, looking forward to that. Take it easy, alright?”</p><p>This is going to sound bitter.</p><p>This is going to sound bitter because it really does taste bitter on his tongue, between his teeth. Like Italian Orvieto wine and it’s pears and apples. Salty like sweat, like saline, like salt water in a fresh cut—Pacific or Atlantic. Scratchy, like the shallow Miyagi gorges, like tags he didn’t cut out on the inside of new leggings, like his throat after a game, if he’s lucky. </p><p>Lain over the top of every map, are the perfectly straight and even lines, making angles, making a grid. The mountains, painted however beautifully, are just for show. The blue of the ocean is never quite the same, either. What makes a map a map is not how it’s painted but how it’s charted—how accurate it shows the distance between places and things down to the cut of the axis. Tobio had known immediately that without the grid, his play would be gone. It’s what’s occurred to him that all of the places he’s been, connected, connected, connected by thread, are going to be so much harder to get back to.</p><p>And he’s bitter, so, so bitter about it all.</p><p>“Have you been,” Tobio trails off, eyes scanning the map hung on the wall between vending machines in the rec center’s lobby, “here?”         </p><p>Sometime after their long way home, Tobio is the tallest he’s ever been, which is to say he’s standing on the bench, to get the best view of the whole map. Kazuyo remains sitting, watching Tobio maintain his balance, watches him use his words.</p><p>Tobio just slapped his hand on any old point on the map, to be honest, not expecting a real answer, not knowing he’d put his fingers on, of all places, Sochi, Russia. Kazuyo lifts Tobio’s hand by the wrist to look before he smiles and says, “yes, I have.”</p><p><em>Wow</em>, Tobio should have known, <em>Kazuyo is really amazing</em>. “What about,” he does the same thing again, the roll of the dice, “here?”</p><p>It’s Vancouver, Canada. “Yes.”</p><p>“Here.” San Francisco, California.</p><p>“Not there, but here.” Kazuyo slides Tobio’s hand lower, past Los Angeles and Irvine to stop on a smaller word. “That’s where I found that hat of yours. The Hollywood hat.”</p><p>“What about,” Tobio’s hand drops, and he smacks it on a whole other continent, “here?”</p><p>Rio de Janero, Brazil. “Yes, I’ve been there.”</p><p>(He didn’t asked if Kazuyo knew anyone there, missed anyone there, because what are places if not another soul that’s present as you meet up for coffee or for yoga or for fishing or for volleyball. The answer would have been yes, but only because Kazuyo would hear wrong: he did miss someone while he was there. Another one of those side effects that come to be after living for decades, for better or for wrose, but by that legend, Tobio’s answer would have been yes, too.)</p>
<hr/><p>[New Missed Message] “Listen, Tobio-kun, I’m calling to apologize. I ran my mouth a bit too much to the papers this week, I didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry. I know I don’t really know if you’re retiring, and you probably don’t even really know if you’re retiring, right? So honestly, it’s this Wantanbe’s fault for not cross-checkin’ her information like a reporter with dignity, but also mine, for making it sound like it was a sure thing. I don’t know if it is. I hope it’s not. Who else am I supposed to run six-two’s with? Nakisuna? Kid’s a scrub. Whatever. You better get well now that I’m thinking about it, okay? Okay. See ya later, Tobio-kun.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>[New Missed Message] "..." (Call Ends)</p>
<hr/><p>Friday was forecasted to be harsh and humid and so it became. Tobio sits at the foot of his bed, just in front of the window, which he managed to get up and crack open on his own. Leaning over, closer, closer, until he can rest his chin on the windowsill if he sits on the complete edge of the mattress, Tobio can tell he’s not going to have it in him to leave his room today. If he’s honest, given The Headache, dull, but prepared, he’s probably going to have it in him to just sit with anyone either, sunglasses or street food or not. But he opened a window, he’ll tell Miwa once she gets back from the store. He made it to the window. Tobio closes his eyes. It’s bright, it’s really bright, so bright the light catches and holds behind his eyelids until everything’s pink. But he’s gotten the window open, and the breeze is worth it.</p><p>“What’re you doing?”</p><p>Tobio’s heart just about bursts from his chest, but when he turns around, it’s just Hinata, leaning in the doorway again. “Idiot,” he says, a hand clenching his shirt. </p><p>“Clever,” Hinata replies, deadpan.</p><p>They blink at each other, make progressively more nonsensical faces at each other, when it occurs to Tobio that the plan affirmed last night was for Hinata and The Band to meet here, at 4:30. “What time is it now?” he asks.</p><p>Hinata doesn’t reach for his phone pocket, shrugs instead, guesses. “Three-thirty?” <em>Of course,</em> Tobio thinks, but Hinata’s weirdly sheepish, it’s not worth pointing out the extra hour because of that. Because he's sheepish. Because Hinata’s weird.</p><p>“I don’t think,” he starts instead, disappointed in his own body for having a headache, for being sore after what? A whole hour, hour and a half of socialization, an entire day and night before. “I don’t think I’ll feel like seeing anyone, once they get here.”</p><p>“Oh, don’t worry, we know,” Hinata says on the exhale. “Yamaguchi and Yachi really just wanted to put the offer out there, to check on you. So you wouldn’t feel left out or anything.”</p><p>Tobio at no point was going to feel left out, festival or not, but. But. “Thanks.” But he’s gotten some good advice, recently.a</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Hinata dismisses him, of course, swipes a hand through the air. “You're pooped. I can go, sit out on your rock-hard couch again, if you want to be alone.”</p><p><em>Go where; </em>Tobio wonders if he looks worse or better than Hinata by his own standards. He's pooped, sure, but Hinata doesn’t look good, not at all; <em>where are you going?</em></p><p>“No—” Tobio answers quickly, and then adds before he can stop himself. “How did you answer Tsukishima so fast yesterday? How did you already know?”</p><p>Hinata crosses his arms close to his chest instead of asking for Tobio to clarify, which altogether means he knows exactly what Tobio's unexact question is referring to. “I’ve thought about it all already, and made a plan for when I retire.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>His confirmation is only honest. “Yeah.”</p><p>“But,” but Tobio shakes his head when he hears his own voice. Desperate. Not sad, not yet. But only because, because, "you still have time, though."</p><p>“I mean, maybe,” honest but shallow. The shoulders he shrugs with are the buoys that stop beach-goers from wading any deeper than the line drawn by the rope—<em>where does he think he’s going</em>— “But probably not as much as we think, though, right?”</p><p>He wishes he was within arm’s reach of his pillows so he could hit Hinata in the head again for sounding so defeated. He wishes he wasn't so tired—pooped, fine— that he could stand up and knock that stupid orange of hair off it's axis. Tobio's supposed to be the one who's scared. Tobio's the one with the concussion, but here's Hinata sounding like he's got a fucking head injury, like he's got something to be scared of.</p><p>Before Tobio can really tell him off, the distant hum of a phone vibrates. Hinata reaches into his pocket, looks at the caller, puts a finger up to Tobio. “Hold on, actually, I gotta take this one," he murmurs, turning away without looking back.</p><p><em>Where are you going? </em>He hears Hinata greet someone, not in Japanese, but in Portuguese. </p><p>In Portuguese.</p><p>“Wait,” Tobio says, as he puts everything together a bit too late, “wait, Hinata—"</p>
<hr/><p>Something about Hinata is constantly treading water and would probably continue to tread water even if he ever one day found himself tall enough to reach the bottom of the pool. </p><p>And if Hinata is treading, then everyone around him is, too. It’s what’s happening at this bar, right now, with everyone Tobio’s ever met knocking elbows and throwing back laughs that ricochet off the walls and back into one another. They don’t know they’re in orbit, that in the center of the room is the reason that despite whatever post-game plans they thought they had, everyone—<em>everyone</em>— from the Jackals, the Adlers, and Karasuno all wound up here, in this specific low-lit, high-energy space, together. Maybe they know in the back of their minds that as they all catch-up with one another, they’re kicking and wading. Maybe they can place that amongst the scent of fresh-made pork buns is the musty smell of a gymnasium in a little farming town a little north of here that makes them want to keep it up, keep this up. It’s the kind of enthusiasm that makes Tobio feel like a version of himself that has cannonballed into every body of water he has ever seen. It’s not new, it’s just the truth that even he’s become privy to—the force that renders Hinata unstoppable.</p><p>Except now isn’t the time to think of Hinata as unstoppable, Tobio hiccups to himself in half as many words. Not when they’re both elbow to table, hand to hand, eye to eye, waiting for the countdown to wrestle the other’s arm back to the bar’s oaky surface. He’s not drunk, he’s just going to win.</p><p>“Any last words before I beat you into the ground for the second time today?” Hinata can hardly get through the challenge without laughing a little, and his cheeks are splotched bright red.</p><p>Tobio shakes his head, chin to shoulder to shoulder. He does this for longer than necessary, perhaps, and only stops when Hinata cackles right in his face.</p><p>“You’re drunk,” he snorts.</p><p>Tobio shakes his head again, for a reasonable amount of time now, because he also has to lean in close over the table and reply “<em>Fuck you</em>.”</p><p>“Eloquent as ever, I see.” Tanaka’s at the head of the table, holding their clasped hands in one of his own to act as referee. “Gentlemen,” an evil, mischievous referee, “on my countdown.”</p><p>“Don’t get us kicked out of the bar,” warns Sawamura, arms crossed behind Hinata’s side of the table with Ennoshita, Kinoshita, and Narita, feigning maturity as all they draw closer to watch the contest.</p><p>“Three—”</p><p>“Please don’t hurt yourselves,” adds Azumane, from the side of the table where Yachi and Kiyoko are pretending like this isn’t happening.</p><p>“Two.”</p><p>“<em>Wooooo</em>!” Suga slurs over Tobio’s shoulder, camera out and at the ready, though his beer sloshes to land on Tsukishima and Yamaguchi and their jackets. “Now put your backs into it!” </p><p>“One.”</p><p>Their arm-wrestling match isn’t over as quickly as a three-one blowout (wait… <em>wait…</em>) but it ends quick enough. A clash of muscle, the strain of brawn colliding, forcing clasped hands one way or the other through grit teeth. He would’ve won, easily, maybe a few years ago, but Hinata really is as strong as he looks, stronger than he looks now—wait, wait, <em>focus</em>—but Tobio can’t stop thinking that this, this is so much fun, when it’s his knuckles that hit the oak first. </p><p>Hinata jumps to his feet with his fists punching the air, cheers from every corner of the bar meeting his victory, jeers from an audience he didn’t know they had meeting Tobio’s loss. “Tough day, Noodle-yama, but that’s one more for me.” He’s being taunted as Hinata holds up a single finger like Tobio’s going to have to do the math himself, too.</p><p>“No,” he says, more to the math than to anything else.</p><p>“But you lost.”</p><p>Ugh. Losing. “No.”</p><p>“You did though. You literally just did.”</p><p>Tobio doesn’t feel like he’s lost. “No.”</p><p>Too many people are here to see Hinata, most for the first time in years, and like magnets, they are drawn to him in numbers that eventually have to push Tobio away from the table. That’s okay, he has other things he has to do too. Like lament with Hoshiumi that they both were in top form today, which makes their loss better and worse. Or get jostled by Suga and Tanaka about, Tobio’s not sure, living maybe, both enthused and loud and drunker than him. Or think absently that three years of the occasional text or phone call or low-quality beach volleyball stream on a site entirely in Portuguese was not at all enough.</p><p>He’s got Yachi admiring his nailbeds when something grabs him by the sweatshirt and pulls down.</p><p>“Hey listen, <em>listen</em>,” Hinata blots through a hushed sort of shout, his iron grip hold Tobio low enough that he can count the glints of light that spell something evil in his eyes. “Do you wanna go do something <em>really</em> stupid?”</p><p>Given everything that’s known, in what world was Tobio ever going to say no?</p><p>This is how the two of them end up taking a rideshare to the nearest beach close to eleven at night. They’re let out under a single streetlight beside a wooden path leading through a forest of cattails right down to the ocean, the proximity to which sobers Tobio up at least a little upon cold, cold contact. A few lights twinkle up and down the coast, but it’s late, and once their driver pulls away, it’s just Kageyama and it’s just Hinata, inflating a volleyball in all their coats (“Loser has to blow up the ball”).</p><p>“I told you, when I got home, I’d show you beach volleyball for real, for real, right?” Shouyou’s stretching his calves, hand to ankle, now that he’s done teasing Tobio for struggling with the air pump. </p><p>“That’s when we thought we were going to see each other over the summer,” Tobio points out, the two of them only separated by a few hours on the train, tryouts and National Team commitments, rather than an ocean.</p><p>“Yeah, too bad <em>someone</em> was busy.”</p><p>“You were even <em>busierer</em> than me!”</p><p>“Doesn’t matter now, I kept up my end of the deal, so.” Hinata snatches the ball once it looks less flat than it had in his backpack, presses it together and says, of course, “Set for me!”</p><p>Between them, still, is not an ocean or a train, but a net. “Then get on the same side of the court as me, dumbass!”</p><p>A step, a toss, and Tobio sets the ball, plotting the rise over run along the grid in his head, except the lines go wibble-wobble and he catches a breeze and then there’s also the fact that when Hinata does his run-up, his hitting hand is a whole Mikasa-and-a-half higher than Tobio's muscles were expecting it to be. </p><p>Hinata thinks fast, mid-air, and headbutts the ball to the other side of the net, still in bounds. When he lands once more on two feet, he looks over at Tobio so smug and so proud.</p><p><em>He's different, not all the way, but different,</em> he thinks, and then, <em>he's really good at this. </em></p><p>“That was awfully high,” is all Tobio has to say about that.</p><p>Hinata scoffs, puffs hot air into the bitter breeze that ruffles his hair where he darts under the net and grabs the ball. “Why do you sound surprised! I jumped on sand for two years straight! I could probably go higher, if we didn’t play a full game today.”</p><p>“Then you should go higher—”</p><p>“Unfair.”</p><p>“You said that you could, so do it.”</p><p>“Your set was <em>low</em>, Bakageyama.”</p><p>“I’m—”</p><p>“—drunk.”</p><p>“Adjusting.”</p><p>“Okay, sure,” Hinata passes the ball, fast, to Tobio, who only catches it by the fingertips, “then why don’t you try jumping?”</p><p>“No," he says his more on behalf of his sloshing stomach, his head, and his pride, than anything else.</p><p>“Come on, you should see how good I’ve gotten at setting on the beach, you’d be jealous!”</p><p>Ugh. He can really set now, too. “No.”</p><p>“Then jump and meet me!” But it’s not enough, not enough until he has to take a step closer, closer enough for Tobio to catch that light again and see the challenge for himself: “Unless you’re, oh I don’t know, chicken.”</p><p>So Tobio takes a few steps back, on the mark, ready, gives Hinata the toss, and goes to jump.</p><p>He gets nowhere. It’s incredible how far he does not get. An above-average jump height for this season’s V. League and it’s all nothing, nothing in the face of the sand, an extra coat, and the cold that blows off the ocean. </p><p>Tobio lands to the sound of nothing but that wind in his ears, startled, looking at his sneakers in betrayal.</p><p>“Oh.” He tries again, just a jump up and down in place. “Oh, I <em>hate</em> this.”</p><p>Hinata snorts, points and points, at his shoes, his legs, at him. “See!”</p><p>“I can’t move <em>at all</em>.”</p><p>“I told you!”</p><p>“This sucks,” Tobio pouts.</p><p>Hinata’s face is contorting like he’s laughing but no noise is coming out. He might even be crying, holding his gut, wiping his tears, until finally, a great whooping howl escapes his open mouth and he laughs and laughs and laughs. He throws himself back on the ground, too, without a care in the world, laughing, crying, laughing mostly. Tobio’s face hurts? He might be laughing a little too. It’s funny. It’s really funny. It’s so fucking cold outside. But that’s almost funnier, that in-between guffaws and chortles is a cold winter wind telling them they’re staying too late, they really oughta get home, get some rest. Come back tomorrow. Play more volleyball tomorrow. The world is the smallest it’s ever been right now, stretching no wider than the headlights moving beyond the cattails and the vast black of ocean, lapping at the sand. There’s no stars in the sky that would look back if he looked up to check, just Hinata, if he turns his neck to the side. Just Hinata, and looking forward to tomorrow.</p><p>They really don’t stay, lying side by side in the sand, for very long at all. It really is fucking cold, and it’s only the beginning of the season, no need to make it harder by staying out long enough to get sick. Hinata calls another rideshare, which is to say, he listens to Tobio’s parrot his phone code to call a rideshare that way, because his cell isn't getting any service. They end up under the same streetlight they’d stepped out beneath for it to arrive.</p><p>“Kageyama," Hinata says, not slurring, not at all, "you’re smiling so much.”</p><p>“I’ve been,” he pauses, hiccups, mostly, “drinking.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you were like that before too, during the game,” Hinata replies, kicking a nearby rock between his feet.</p><p>“Was I?”</p><p>“Oh yeah, like the whole time.”</p><p>“Oh.” He’d normally say something else here. A ‘you need to focus’ or ‘this is just my face’ but. But. He doesn’t. He says something else instead.</p><p>“I’m just really happy, I guess.” Because this is fun. Because this is volleyball. Because I missed you. “That we get to do this again.”</p>
<hr/><p>And he’d do it again. And again. And again. And again. </p><p>This is the answer, in minus tempo—ready to jump out of his skin, set his hands on fire, drown him in the creek if he doesn’t move, doesn’t move now. This is his answer, this is what he has left to do. And he has to do it before he forgets.</p><p>“Wait,” he says, crackles, clears his throat—he won’t choke this time, won’t sink, he’ll say what he means. “Wait,” Tobio calls again, still not loud enough. And so, shaky, he shifts as quickly as he can around the edge of his bed, where he puts two feet to the ground and moves to stand and grab his crutches. </p><p>Except he gets the timing all wrong—the tips of his fingers knock the crutches over and Tobio trips, falls, a great collapse, into a heap across his blue carpet. Over eighty kilograms of weight crashes onto the ground and the thing that hurts the most is still his head, his head, his head, the impact of his right hip bouncing off the walls of his body to collect and drown his brain in white noise. It hurts. It’s hot and sharp. It’s painful. But it’s fine; Tobio uses his arms, one hand at a time, to pull the rest of his body across the floor. <em>This works</em>, he thinks, <em>this will do.</em></p><p>Tobio keeps a list in time with his inhales and exhales so he doesn’t forget what he wants to say, he knows what he wants to say and he has to— “Hinata?” –he has to say it <em>now</em>, he has to do this now, he has to, he has to, “You idiot, wait! Wait, Hinata!”</p><p>There’s a course on a map charted for Tobio, a travel log of places he’s been and would go to again. The beach, somewhere off of Metropolitan Sendai and, and the V.League, his whole 2018-2019 V.League season—Tobio makes it out the bedroom door, here. And the National Team, wherever they’ve been. And Rome and the long stretches of Italian countryside that they pass on the train to get to Milano, Treia, Perugia, but mostly Rome—he’s made it to the hall, and it’s so much brighter out here, he wants to put his head down and cover his eyes. But he doesn’t, he keeps kicking, stretching with hands to pull himself ahead—Rio, and the games, and all the waiting, the waiting, the waiting he’d done, but also, the times he’s been back to Brazil since—</p><p>Tobio makes it to his living room, baking hot under the August sun—those glass sliding doors crystalline clear, and through them, Tobio spots Hinata’s back, the slump of his shoulders, as he talks on the phone.</p><p>Tokyo, too. And all of Miyagi, from Sendai to mountain paths and Karasuno. Of course, Karasuno.</p><p>He tries to call for Hinata like it’s match point. “<em>Oi! Hinata Shouyou! </em>Shouyou, come on! <em>Wait!”</em></p><p>That gets Hinata’s attention well enough. He turns around, half-laughing, mid-sentence and just drops, suspends upon seeing Tobio laid out, eyes wide. Luckily, he’s quick—that tends to be his thing, after all—as he throws the door open, taking the volume of his shout from low to burning— <em>“Kage-YAMA?”</em> Hinata mutters something close and low into the receiver, again in Portuguese, before tossing the phone on the closest available surface and comes closer, dropping to his knees.</p><p>“Kageyama, what are you <em>doing</em>? What’s the matter with you! Why—"</p><p>“<em>Stop planning</em>,” Tobio says; Hinata opens his mouth to say something and stops when he can’t, not when Tobio has him by the t-shirt in fistfuls, pulling himself up, if not pulling Hinata closer. “Don’t you dare plan on retiring any time soon. You can’t go anywhere, not while I can still catch up,” he wheezes.</p><p>Hinata shakes his head, searching Tobio’s face for understanding. “What are you talking about?”</p><p>“I’m at 1,348, and you’re only at 1,350,” Tobio sputters, the argument he’d built on the way here only coming to him in waves, but the realization seems to dawn on Hinata just fine—Tobio’s close enough to his eyes to recognize the connection being made between the black of his pupils in real-time, no delay. “That’s only two points, I can still catch up. So you, you—you have to go to back São Paulo. And you could take Paris, Hinata, easily!”</p><p>“Kageyama,” is all Hinata has to choke on when he takes Tobio’s wrists in his hands, but Tobio doesn’t let go of the shirt’s worn fabric, just lets his fists go white. It’s unstoppable force and immovable object again, just reversed; Hinata can’t seem to move and Tobio can’t seem to stop. “I don’t know—” he does know, <em>he does know</em> “—what you’re trying to say—”</p><p>“I’m trying to—What I—<em>I don’t—</em>” Tobio knows too, he has something to say. He does know. It’s as stupid out loud as it is in his head, which is also loud with the pounding of his heartbeat along his temples. But he has to, he has to, he has to. “Just don’t stop! Don’t wait up for me! You said you weren’t ready to retire, so don’t be, don’t ever be, I’ll just catch up! As long as you’re still playing, I’ll just meet you there, that’s what I still have to do!”</p><p>“Kageyama, I—” </p><p>Not a breeze, but the wind of a bright sunny day smacks Tobio clear on the forehead, between his shoulderblades, forces him ahead. “I mean it. That’s what I still have left. I wouldn’t have done anything differently! I’d do it all the same. Everything. I’d do it all again. And I will do it again, because I—I just want to play volleyball again. Even if it’s not today, even if not tomorrow, all I want to do is keep playing more and more volleyball.” His face is wet, maybe. Something tastes like salt between his teeth as he snarls: “But that means you can’t stop either.”</p><p>(He knows, alright? He knows. This isn’t denial, just like it isn’t really anger or bargaining or depression.)</p><p>(In the very least, it’s the same way that Tobio’s been told over and over, so it must be true, turned back onto his greatest rival, teammate, scaffold, who only ever promised a destination, never the directions to get there. At the most, it’s an afterlife for the faithful who skip shrines and lack theology, for monsters and their kings; at the least, it’s for the living. Hinata knows being okay is as much a habit as anything else, past, Tobio knows being okay must become a habit, present. Tobio may really never get to do it all again, Hinata may never really toss out his back-up plans for the end, they both know that, but there’s an extent to which their volleyball was just as much about being alive and together as it was about lines on a court, the connections between players and the places they go, and flying over the mountain’s peak.)</p><p>Tobio’s sense of time and space, as mentioned, is still a mess, so no, he doesn’t know how long he holds Hinata to the ground like that, how long they just breathe and continue to breathe hard. In and out, oxygen, no water.</p><p>“Are you done?” Hinata asks, hoarse.</p><p>One more, in and out, just to make sure. “I think so.”</p><p>Tobio lets go of Hinata’s shirt before Hinata lets go of Tobio’s wrists, though he keeps them as Tobio shifts to sitting back-to-back with the couch. Then, he stands up, brushes off his shorts, and closes the glass door. When he finally comes back to sit, cross-legged in front of Tobio, Hinata seems, well…</p><p>More than a bit mocking. </p><p>“Feel better?” he asks, the corners of his mouth turning wry.</p><p>Tobio’s eyes narrow. “Yes.”</p><p>“Good. Next question.” He could be wrong, but Tobio suspects there’s something he doesn’t know. “What,” Hinata pauses, biting his lip, “inspired that, Kageyama-kun?”</p><p>Kageyama’s brows furrow. He’s very tired now. He's very tired now and would like a snack or another nap. Also to not be embarrassed or teased, would be overall, preferable. “Well, I can tell you’ve been upset, all week…”</p><p>“Yes, that’s true.”</p><p>“Because you always have to act weirder than normal and make it obvious...”</p><p>“Unnecessary, but go on.”</p><p>“You said in the bathroom that you weren’t ready to retire,” Tobio explains, watching as Hinata’s mouth parts to make slight <em>“ohhhh”</em>. “But when Tsukishima talked about what you wanted to do when you retired, you answered right away, like you just made a plan that was going to be soon…”</p><p>“And you thought I meant that I would stop playing, not only ‘soon’, but immediately,” Hinata concludes.</p><p> “I didn’t think you were <em>that</em> stupid, but…” But when he thinks about it, it doesn’t seem so urgent this time. This time, it seems like maybe, maybe he skipped a few steps…</p><p>“No, no, this makes sense actually, that you’d go straight to the worst-case scenario,” Hinata says as much. “You're usually spot-on."</p><p>"Right."</p><p>"No simple mistakes, like thinking I said I wasn't ready to retire instead of understanding I meant that I wasn't ready for you to retire."</p><p>"...Right."</p><p>Okay, next question," Hinata purses his lips, tapping his fingertips against the wooden floor, "what did you think I was doing just now?”</p><p>Tobio blinks. “Talking on the phone.”</p><p>“Okay, that and,” Hinata motions with his hands for Tobio to continue. When Tobio realizes his mistake and wires his own mouth shut instead, Hinata has no problems vocalizing their shared conclusion for himself. “Did you just hear me speak Portuguese and assume I was talking to? Someone about my career? Someone from ASAS São Paulo, maybe about my career?” </p><p>The short answer? Yes.</p><p>“That was my friend, Pedro,” he continues. “We were roommates when I lived in Rio. When I go back to Brazil for the season, I’m going to stop by his new place and we’re going to hang out for a few days and eat at all the restaurants we used to order takeout from.”</p><p>“Oh,” Tobio squeaks.</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“That sounds fun.”</p><p>“It will be.” </p><p>“So you weren’t, uh,” Tobio averts his gaze towards the floor, the ceiling, the wall, towards the kitchen, towards the balcony, anywhere but Hinata, “about to do something really, <em>really</em> stupid like—”</p><p>“Quit, while I’m ahead?” Hinata busts into the widest, most malicious grin. “No, Bakageyama.” </p><p>Oh no.</p><p>“And now I just <em>never</em> will! Just play volleyball ‘til I <em>die</em>, now that I’ve watched you throw yourself out of bed—”</p><p>“I didn’t <em>throw </em>myself—”</p><p>“—and crawl across the ground to tell me something that could’ve actually waited five minutes, like we’re in the climax of a shoujo manga.”</p><p>“Shut up.”</p><p>But Hinata's shrill, his voice only pitches higher and higher. “Like, you didn’t even call me a dumbass, that’s how I knew it was serious."</p><p>“When you go to Brazil," Tobio hisses between his teeth, "how about you don’t come back?”</p><p>“Why, so you can throw yourself on the ground for me there too?” All this to say, Tobio is relieved, relieved. He won’t say it, and probably doesn’t have to, but he didn’t want this to change either. <em>“Shouyou~! Shouyooouu~! Keep playing volleyball with me!”</em></p><p>Hinata’s impersonation is bad, and so Tobio kicks him in the shin. “No way, uh-huh, not this again,” Hinata says, but he’s grinning, laughing a little. They can’t stop laughing, then.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There are a few things Tobio forgets until he remembers them again.</p><p>“Oh, it still counts as <em>my</em> knowledge, but I only know this much about birds because Hirugami-san’s brother told me!” says Hoshiumi, when asked in the back of the Adler’s bus. “He’s in vet school, which means I’ve gotten like, way smarter learning vet things by proximity.” Tobio and Ushijima are nodding along with intent and still can’t anticipate the way Hoshiumi whips his head towards the front of the bus. “You too, RIGHT, HIRUGAMI-SAN?” (Captain Hirugami responded just as loud—“stop YELLING, KOURAI-KUN!”—but Tobio still doesn’t remember who they were playing in the scrimmage that day.)</p><p>“I have a number of family members and friends living abroad in other countries.” This was Ushijima’s explanation, given when prompted, when they went out to find food after the scrimmages had ended for the evening. “So, I’ve learned while traveling to visit them when it’s considered polite or rude to tip at restaurants since I’ve rarely known enough of the language to ask the servers myself. I didn’t find this information out on my own.” (Maybe it doesn’t really matter who they were playing. Maybe this is okay, too.)</p><p>Miwa told Tobio that hair ties cause breakage, faked a gag once when a woman with a ponytail drawn back noticeably tight walked past them once, renouncing the pigtails and ponytails she’d tossed up carelessly in her youth. Also Shimizu Kiyoko and Azumane Asahi, sometime during first year. He’s detailing what he knows about damage to hair follicles when Sokolov waves them up a few rows, is hanging over the back of his own bus seat, passing his phone off to Heiwajima, then Hirugami.</p><p>“Did you guys see this?” he says, grim. “About Barnes.”</p><p><strong><em>BARNES BENCHED? SURPRISING SWAPS AHEAD OF JACKALS/ADLERS SEASON OPENER </em></strong>reads the headline. ‘Surprising’ is a word for it, underselling the shock of a team’s own canon waiting in the wings for their first match against the reigning League champions. Like Suzaku benching Ushijima—it’s a decision unheard of.</p><p>“They’re probably phasing him out,” Sokolov shrugs. “Rumor has it he’s shipping back to Australia next season. Might as well start cycling through some of the more untapped talent to see what his move will do long-term.”</p><p>“Fair, but swapping me out to ‘rest’ for some no-name rookie?” Heiwajima huffs. “No thanks. Shit’s degrading.”</p><p>“Well, who’s the rookie?” asks Hirugami.</p><p>Sokolov takes his phone back, scrolls and scrolls a little further. “Hinata Shouyou?”</p><p>Hoshiumi chokes on his own tongue, opening his mouth to try confirming the name. Ushijima stays firm in place, but he glares, glares at something, until he gets a turn with the article and can glare at the screen. Tobio checks and checks again that the name is right, checks, checks again that his wait is finally over.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“This wasn’t even a recent development. I decided what I was going to do when I retired while I was in Rio,” Shouyou says, holding his hands to his feet, stretching so that he’s perfectly folded over at the hips.</p><p><em>Ah</em>. Tobio, with his bad leg up and over his couch’s armrest, the icepack that should’ve been on his knee laying over his hot, flustered face instead. He has resorted himself to rolling out his wrists, at the most. <em>That makes sense,</em> he thinks, first, and then <em>That’s a relief, </em>he thinks, second about both the familiar, repetitive movement and Hinata’s admission. Except for the part where he still doesn’t relate, at all. “How did you do it?” he asks.</p><p>“Well, I had the time to think about it, mostly? Especially the days where I was biking around the city for work or helping Lucio-san, I didn’t want to waste a second, even if I was too busy to play at all that day, or the next day even,” Hinata shrugs, sitting back up to pull his legs to sit butterfly. And I was still assistant teaching some kiddie classes at the time, which I thought was really fun. I figured I would just keep that up at the gym I worked at in Hitachi the year before I left if none of my V. League tryouts panned out.”</p><p>“But why wouldn’t your tryouts have panned out?”</p><p>“I mean, I didn’t know what was gonna happen once I got back here. I had no idea,” Hinata says, defensive in a way that means even if Tobio had posed his question more aggressively than intended, that he'd hit a sore spot. “Just that I felt confident and good about my odds and that I owed it to so many people to make the most of all the time I spent putting in the work there." The one that spurs Hinata on to keep up, up, up, higher, higher, higher. "I thought if I didn’t make the V. League, coaching could be my way of giving back some of what I learned." The part that started late and feels behind, he and Tobio know each other. "Maybe I’d even have more days playing volleyball than not.”</p><p>But still, recognition or not, Tobio shakes his head. “Dumb.”</p><p>“Coaching is not dumb,” Hinata asserts.</p><p>“Not coaching,” says Tobio, doubling back. “You were going to make the V. League once you got back.”</p><p>“Nobody could’ve known that for sure.”</p><p>“Yes, they could. I knew.” Hinata’s head whips around to glance at him from above, then. Tobio pretends like he doesn’t notice or care, pushes his ice pack down over his eyes. “And, on top of that, you took way too long doing it, so.” </p><p>Hinata only huffs, stretching his legs back out to bend at the waist once more. “I took exactly as much time as I needed, thanks,” he says, warmly, to the floor. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Suga walks Tobio back to the front office once his visit is over, pleased with himself for keeping the secret of The Other Kageyama for as long as he had. “I couldn’t believe this kid when he showed up in my class. It was like having you as a student, but super tiny and with a worse haircut.” He’s gleeful, all mischief. Tobio’s exhausted, exhausting himself further wondering what it is Suga does this all day, every day. “I knew if I brought you in, he’d go nuts. I’ve never seen him talk so much, let alone the rest of the class! Whew. Well, I think that went smoothly, right? You did great, Kageyama.”</p><p>They’re at the front doors now, and Tobio has a train to catch back to a bigger world (namely, Tokyo) in about two hours. “Oh. Thank you,” he forces out, abashed.</p><p>Suga’s expression of glee does not phase or tremble, and yet. “Do you take notes?”</p><p>“Sure?”</p><p>“Great, just one suggestion, a question really.” Suga grabs Tobio by his Adlers jacket, pulling him out of the way as a woman and her child exit out the front door. Tobio watches them go, and when he looks back at Suga, he can tell by the tilt of his head that he’s carefully, carefully being watched. “Do you really think you wouldn’t be a good coach?”</p><p>There’s a short answer—‘yeah’— a long one—‘I’ve literally never thought about it before now’—and one, he knows, that feels truer than the other two. “I think it’d be a hard adjustment,” Tobio admits.</p><p>“From what exactly? Being vice-captain? Having your own kouhai who look up to you? Coming early and staying late way too often, back when I was a third year? With Hinata, who was basically a brand-new player.” Suga shrugs into folding his arms, stance shifting from senpai to sensei seamlessly. “I dunno, Kageyama, I just watched you level with a classroom of second graders. And that went pretty well.”</p><p>“Because they were in class. Your class. It wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t been there.”</p><p>“You should know better than to think flattery will get you anywhere with me.”</p><p>“And kids are terrifying.”</p><p>“Oh, they’re not so bad. They just want someone to listen to them, first of all, and believe them and what they have to say, second of all.” Tobio blinks at this, twice. “You got that down quick enough, huh?</p><p>“When I started teaching,” Suga starts, looking towards the glass doors at the front of the school, the blistery fall day only a portrait from here. “I made a list of all the kinds of things my favorite teachers did on one side of the paper and on the other side, made a list of all the kinds of things my least favorite teachers did. I figured if I could do everything on the good side while avoiding everything on the bad side then eventually, I might finally be good at my job.”</p><p><em>Finally</em>? Tobio can’t argue with Suga, arguing with Suga is unthinkable, because he’d have to be wrong first, maybe at least far enough away from the point. “If you want me to come back and coach Shigeo’s team you should just say so,” Tobio narrows a glare at him.</p><p>Suga tosses his head back and laughs heartily, taking a hand to Tobio’s back and pushing him out the front door. “I try to advocate for my students in every scenario.”</p><p> </p><p>Invincibility and endlessness could be considered synonymous—‘when I play with you, I feel invincible’ and ‘when I play with you, it feels endless’ are closer than they seem. Closer than Brazil and Japan, anyway, somewhere between 9 and 10. The difference comes with accounting for setbacks, implying they won’t happen versus knowing they will and perpetuating anyway, maybe, or just a few more years of experience that you’d hope to have too, ten years on. The point Hinata’s trying to make is that, is that they don’t have to wait for volleyball to rope them back together again, if they really don’t want to.</p><p>“Okay, so you come back from Brazil next spring, do you,” a pause, “wanna do something besides play volleyball? Together.”</p><p>Hinata’s head pops up from behind the couch, along the wall where he’d left his charger between the floor lamp and nothing. He’s been sent on a scavenger hunt to make sure he doesn’t leave anything behind this time—chargers, electronics, socks, concerns—and Tobio’s sitting in the chair, having made it all the way back to the shady hallway again. He’s stretching out his legs here, doctor’s orders, and not looking at Hinata, not until the long stretch of silence makes him glance up. Hinata looks disturbed, horrified maybe.</p><p>A scowl. “You just <em>said</em>—”</p><p>“No, no, I know I did, I just can’t believe I’m hearing you say it,” he starts just as suspicious before Tobio watches how he stops himself, orange head of hair tilting to the side. “What did you have in mind?”</p><p>“I, uh,” Tobio mumbles. He has a plan for what he wants to say this go-around, and even if he feels a little stupid, a little scrutinized, he wants to try: “I went fishing this one time.”</p><p>“Fishing?” Hinata asks.</p><p>“With Nishinoya, in Italy,” Tobio clarifies.</p><p>“Okay.” A pause.</p><p>“And it was really fun.”</p><p>Hinata leans with his weight against the back of the couch like he does over the side of the balcony, curious and as close as he can get. “And you wanna know if I want to go fishing with you?”</p><p>Tobio glances at his knees; one bent in, one stretched out. “Yes.”</p><p>“You know,” he doesn’t look at Hinata when he laughs a little. “I just might be able to pencil you in.”</p><p>A nod, slow, then with intent, and Tobio feels a bit better. He doesn’t know anything about fishing, not that he’d really needed to before now. Not that he really needs to at all, but it’s what he wants to do. This is what he wants.</p><p>“Bet I can catch more fish than you can.” Tobio’s head whips up to catch Hinata’s grin.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I wanted to keep playing lots and lots longer.”</p><p>The sea song starts here.</p><p>“I promise, if you get really good one day.”</p><p>A gust of wind. Eyes gone wide. Bone-deep satisfaction and a hopeful sort of hymn that might cross oceans.</p><p>“Someone even better will come and find you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(Oh come on, you remember what happens next.) </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Not brother. Not rival. Not teammate. 'Partner’ is the word Tobio was probably looking for, he realizes, when Hinata tells him about how he almost didn’t spend half his week here, probably wouldn’t have been able to if it hadn’t been for Hibarida. “I get it, I do.” He’d sought out Hinata before Hinata could seek him out first. “That’s your partner, isn’t it?” Hinata mostly just shakes his head, wondering aloud and with some acidity, how (knowing how) he became Kageyama’s keeper.</p><p>“Is that why you called me ‘Tobio’,” he mutters. “On the phone. With Nee-san.”</p><p>Where he can tell Hinata means to say something along the lines of ‘it slipped’, he really says: “And what are you going to do about it?”</p><p>“Nothing.” And then he holds his tongue, holds his tongue. “Seems a little presumptuous.”</p><p>Hinata laughs, all acrimony and terribly over-blown. “<em>You</em> don’t get to tell me about being presumptuous, not today. Not ever.”</p><p>“It’s okay, I think I feel,” Tobio pauses. Not like himself. “Closer to Tobio. Than Kageyama.”</p><p>It's another one of those moments where they're side by side, sitting back on the bed. He'll have to clean the sheets soon, it's too warm in here. “The one in the paper, you mean?” Hinata asks, nods at the same time as Tobio does, affirming.</p><p>“I know. I can tell," he replies, mildly. “But you’re still you. The King of the Court is still in there, you know. He’s been fighting me all week.</p><p>"Just like first year. All you’ve done since hitting your head is try to fight me, on everything. Almost everything.” The white tile is far away, there's a bandage around Tobio's cut to stop the bleeding. “It’s the only thing that’s made me go ‘oh, maybe he’ll be fine’ in the last few days.”</p><p>“I’m not going to apologize," Tobio announces. </p><p>“Good, I wouldn’t accept one anyway. You sound way more like Kageyama, King of the Court this way.”</p><p>“I don’t.”</p><p>“Do too.”</p><p>“I don’t.” </p><p>“You do too, right now.”</p><p><em>And I don’t want to lose that.</em> (Tobio knew, should’ve known this, like he should’ve known that Miwa was Miwa in the hospital room, and not a stranger, but he’s also sure, now that he doesn’t have to explain this to Hinata.)</p><p>“Well, I can’t dwell on what I’m not, so I have to find out what I can be.” Tobio hums a long, low note. “I think I’m ready.”</p><p>“Good,” Hinata starts. “I’m ready, too.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Your phone’s in your gym bag, gym bag’s by the door.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Of course, he forgets. The hour or so they spend out in his living room and he still forgets. Of course, they have to shift back out to the main room, and between the floor lamp and nothing, Tobio learns that his phone has been at the bottom of his gym bag for what must have been days. He watches Shouyou fish it out, pulling out his sneakers (“Ew,” Shouyou says, and Tobio smacks him with the left shoe) and his journal to hand off to Tobio first. Tucking a shoe under either arm, Tobio finds the pages of his trusted notebook feel familiar in a way he’d really kind of missed, even if the scrawl sends his head swimming. He thumbs absently through the pages of his foreign life a few months, a few weeks, a few days ago when Shouyou finally does enough digging to acquire a charger. </p><p>Once his phone’s been plugged in long enough to come to his homepage, it immediately goes dead again trying to receive all of the messages he’d missed at once. Tobio and Shouyou don’t say anything about it, just blink at each other before they turn all of their attention back on the restart screen. </p><p>When it finally comes to on the second try, the numbers are dramatic: 34 missed calls, 25 left messages, 286 missed texts.</p><p>“To be fair, a number of these are probably from the guys on the team, because NHK had this gala for us and who’s ever really sure what <em>‘semi-formal’ </em>means anyway....”</p><p>Shouyou prattles, explaining how he’d gotten a flood of messages too, about Tobio, when Tobio had failed to reply for days to people who wanted to know how he’s been holding up since Sunday. It’s everyone he’s ever met, he thinks. His manager and Hibarida. Teammates from Ali Roma (Tullio) and from the Adlers (Ushijima and even Romero) and from the National Team (Bokuto and Atsumu). But there’s even more, the notification endless as his thumb works double-time—Kindaichi and Oikawa. Ukai and Takeda. His extended family and his parents and also. Yachi. A few are from Yachi.</p><p> </p><p>[11:35, 9/8] if you are alive, say anything</p><p> </p><p>Tobio doesn’t have to look at her most recent text for very long before he decides on a response.</p><p> </p><p>[03:43, 11/8] anything</p><p> </p><p>“Is that a joke? Are you telling jokes now?” Shouyou prods him, shocked, with an elbow while Tobio continues to search for the particular notification he’s looking for, warm. “Who <em>are</em> you?”</p><p>The banner at the top of his screen brings down a message from Yachi—[1:45, 11/8 : crying emoji]—as Tobio does what he should have done a few days ago. Before long, a reply has been tapped and typed out to his doctor, scheduling his ACL surgery for next Saturday.</p><p>In the meantime, Tobio takes to his notebook and makes a list. The first, of his symptoms, so he knows where to start working. The second, of the things he wants to do once he’s feeling ready, so he knows where he’ll end up. </p><p>Symptoms:</p>
<ul>
<li>Memory</li>
<li>Lights + sounds (ow)</li>
<li>Tired—inconsistent sleep schedule + stamina???</li>
<li>Harder to find balance</li>
<li>Harder to concentrate</li>
<li>Paura</li>
</ul><p>To-do</p>
<ul>
<li>Knee surgery</li>
<li>Fishing</li>
<li>Beard?</li>
</ul><p>There’s other things, he thinks. There’s definitely other things, things everyone wanted him to see—Yachi, Yamaguchi, and especially Tsukishima—but it’s okay. They’ll come to him, it’s okay.</p>
<hr/><p>He’s got to do this himself, which means he made everyone else go first. They should all be in the kitchen already, following Miwa’s lead—“You need to eat more than you have,” she’d told him last night, poking him in the ribs, right at the point that makes him jump, “before you get too skinny.” Now, if Tobio is allowed his way, he’ll be able to sneak in and take a seat at his small dining table smoothly and without much notice; if Miwa or Shouyou or anyone besides Tsukishima tried to do this with him, this first time he goes to sit for a meal in his own kitchen, they’ll probably cheer for him once they all cross the threshold to his living room together. Maybe even congratulate him for getting his butt in the chair. Or for failing to get his butt in the chair. Whichever comes first. </p><p>No matter if he gets it or not, to try is to succeed today. Trying as many times as it takes is a privilege, after all, even when it’s hard—Tobio knows this better than anyone, two hands gripping the sides of his bed for his second attempt to leave his room on his own in as many days. He’ll put both feet to the floor this time. He’ll make sure his crutches are within arms reach before he stands with all of his weight. He’ll learn how Kageyama, without volleyball, walks today.</p><p>Turns out, Kageyama-Without-Volleyball needs two or three practice steps with his crutches to really get the hang of things, and even then, moves a bit mechanically. His head doesn’t hurt though, not yet, so that’s one thing. He even waits until he feels completely balanced before he moves, across the carpet, into the hall, towards the natural light coming in through the living room—two things.</p><p>“Wow, look at him go!” says Yachi.</p><p>“Like lightning!” says Yamaguchi.</p><p>Without looking up, Tobio turns on his crutches and starts to walk back towards his bedroom. </p><p>“Is he trying to run away?” asks Miwa.</p><p>“I’d say so,” says Tsukshima.</p><p>“Hey! Don’t hobble away from us!” Shouyou shouts, or rather, says at a standard, inside speaking voice, threatening to stomp across the floor and drag Tobio out himself. </p><p>Eventually, he makes it without help, taking a seat in the same simple wooden chair at his simple, small table and holds his spine straight and tall against the hard backrest. It’d struck him that it seemed darker in here today than normal, and he finally knows why once he’s situated and feeling brave enough to look toward the sliding glass doors on the opposite side of the room: the forecast said Sunday would be all rain, and so it was. Raining too hard for a festival, given the guests, the afternoon too cloudy, grey, dark to hurt.</p><p>And Tobio is relieved. He goes to take a deep breath in, through his nose, out through his mouth and coughs. Takes another deep breath, again through his nose, to hold it until he sputters. And again, through his nose—cardamom, ginger, pepper, chili, curry.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Miwa’s appeared by his side, holding a bowl in her hands and judging him harshly. “Weirdo,” she says when he shrugs, and places the bowl in front of him on the table, rice to the left, pork curry to the right.</p><p>There’s an immediate understanding that Yachi might’ve missed, taking her first bite in the opposite chair, or that Yamaguchi and Tsukishima didn’t consider, eating comfortably on the uncomfortable couch, but Tobio gets it. Tobio knows. The recipe used to make this meal is different from the one fashioned by his usual takeout place down the block or from the roux he’d endorsed for the Power Curry commercial or like any of the recipes outlined in blogs online when Tobio forgot a step or an ingredient. For a dish so supposedly straight-forward, everyone seems to make it a little different, though they all pale in comparison to the contents of the bowl before Tobio right now; pork curry, as outlined by the Kageyama family recipe. </p><p>“What’re you waiting for, an invitation? Eat, oh wait—” Miwa turns to call over her shoulder, back towards the over. “Hinata-kun, how’s it going in there?”</p><p>“It’s my fault, I always overcook them, no matter how many times I try,” Shouyou whines, eventually emerging, cradling a single egg between two oven mitts.</p><p>“We know,” says Tsukishima. </p><p>“I didn’t ask!” Shouyou says, kicking the back of Tobio’s chair as he does, but Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are already laughing between themselves. Yachi sets down her spoon to take the mitts as Shouyou hands them off to her, catching Tobio’s glance as she does. <em>‘It’s good’</em> she mouths to him.</p><p>(There’s a boy sitting at his grandfather’s table somewhere in Miyagi prefecture.)</p><p>“Let’s see how we did…” Shouyou cracks the egg against the table and aims the yolk to pool in a corner of the bowl. “Yes! Soft-boiled it is!”</p><p>“Way to go, Hinata!” Yachi cheers. Miwa even offers the lightest of applause. </p><p>The final thing you should know is that the boy really isn’t sitting there anymore, but he is. He is, but he isn’t. He’s there, but he’s not. Tobio knows now that what leaves stays a little as well, and if there’s a boy still sitting/not sitting at his grandpa’s kotatsu, there’s another practicing/not practicing his serves in a musty old gymnasium cradled between mountains. There’s another sick in/not in his sister’s bed, lying diagonally so his feet don’t fall off the edge, in her apartment two leases ago. There’s one sprinting/not sprinting through the Rio Olympic Village, one fishing/not fishing off the side of a boat in the Mediterranean, and another promising/not promising a Sendai-area second grader that they’d get to play together one day. There’s one that’s going to laugh until he can/can’t breathe and play volleyball until he falls over to lay/not lay on a cold court of sand, whichever comes first, in the middle of a fateful November night. There's one in the bathroom. One in the bedroom. One on the balcony that's always too bright. And one right here.</p><p>And Tobio will always kind of be those Kageyamas, even the ones he doesn’t immediately remember, and he’ll always be that same boy, even if he never gets to be him again. And that boy will always get to be Tobio and will have the privilege of staying that way, without even having to anticipate all the other Tobios or Kageyamas that he became eventually and will become again. He’ll probably move on to be another Tobio sometime, maybe even get to be Kageyama again, one day, but that’s not all of it either. What he might be trying to say, if he had so much as the ability or desire to do so, is even simpler: </p><p>Tobio feels lucky. Grateful to have been him at all.</p><p>Kicking, kicking, Tobio comes back up, there’s a sharp gasp once he breaks through the surface and finally begins to tred.</p><p>“Are you <em>crying</em>?”</p><p>“Tobio, don’t cry! It’s okay! Don’t cry. It’s okay.”</p>
<hr/><p>On Sunday, Tobio will his washing machine and will laundry without help and with some success, save for the single black sock that he'll in the gantry. It will take all of his energy and most of his day. Shouyou will send him a photo of the Miyagi mountains, having taken the train home to visit his family before he'll for Rio the following Friday, right on schedule. The day after that, Tobio will go in for surgery, first thing in the morning. It will go just as planned.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>:')</p><p>"yacchan-san" is twitter user @datekouuu's true brain child, i decided it was too funny to pass up!</p><p>UPDATE 5/6: twitter user @shrimpchipsss back at it again, this time with miwa's "you had kappa ebisen this whole TIME" <a href="https://twitter.com/shrimpchipsss/status/1388328147049984004?s=20">and tobio's response</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. (then why do i keep counting?)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[New Missed Message] “I don’t want to hear about the Monte Claro libero. I know it’s five in the morning in Tokyo but I just wanted to make sure I beat you to it—I don’t want to hear about the Monte Claro libero! I know everything you’re gonna say before you say it, so don’t bother! Keep it to yourself! I’ll listen to anything else you have to say about the match, I’ll even listen to you talk about learning to doggy-paddle at therapy, but the minute you bring up the number of points I lost to them today, I’ll...do... <em>something</em>. I don’t know! I’ll get back to you! <em>Ugh</em>.”</p>
<hr/><p>The swim team probably already got their morning drills in by nine o’clock, are probably off getting breakfast or working through some extra conditioning or stretches this long after dawn, which is to say the pool at the National Training Center is deserted now, save the waves they left behind rippling across the surface of the water from one end to the other and back again.</p><p>Tobio’s not watching the ripples.</p><p>He’s watching the ceiling tiles and their reflection in the ripples, the lines that morph and stretch and wriggle and can’t settle down, can’t quit, can’t stop now that they’ve started.</p><p>If the pool was perfectly still, its surface would reflect a perfect grid.</p><p>The pool is not perfectly still.</p><p>All this to say, things got worse before they got better, though to be fair, they did get better. By the tail end of October, Tobio’s knee feels like his knee sometimes, but the threat it might give out looms in the movements that still make him weak, so he’s starting a new course of physical therapy in, oh, a half-hour or so. Not in the massive, Olympic-sized pool he’s watching through the glass pane in the hall, but in a much smaller pool, just down the corridor of the aquatics wing. The water is supposed to help with a number of things, like his balance and his coordination and the ongoing task of regaining his mobility and gait as his ACL reshapes. The stitches from the surgery have healed up into two, neat scars on either side of his knee. But importantly, maybe most importantly, in a way that churns his stomach, this new regiment in this new part of the building is also going to pose a bit of a challenge.</p><p>“But I don’t know how to swim,” Tobio had admitted over the whir of the stationary bikes; when he meets with Iwaizumi about his treatment plan, he’s lead into the gym for twenty minutes of cycling, and since it’s Iwaizumi, he joins him on a neighboring bike.</p><p>“That’s okay, it’s mostly about getting in the pool at all, on the first day,” he’d replied, arms folded tight. Tobio’s resistance was, and remains, a whole 1; Iwaizumi’s resistance for a casual meeting meant to talk progress and next steps is an 8. “It’s not really supposed to teach you to swim, it’s designed to strengthen your knee in a low-impact setting, to slowly get it moving more like it should when you live your daily life or even while you’re playing.”</p><p>Tobio’s pedaling picks up in pace.</p><p>“The team thinks this kind of thing would be a good idea. Even your neurologist has high hopes for it, so once your PT has you ready to start sending tosses from the water,” Iwaizumi punches a fist into his other hand, kidding, assuredly, mostly, “just let me know.”</p><p> </p><p>[09:08, 23/10] im not learning to doggy paddle</p><p>[09:08, 23/10] and why would u bring up the libero if u didnt want to talk abt the libero</p><p> </p><p>Tobio slides his phone back in his pocket, and after a while, stops watching the water in the pool slosh back and forth, forward and back, to rub the early morning out of his eyes, hobbling towards the locker room. He still gets tired, really tired. And foggy. His relationship with bright lights has improved, but not well enough to stand underway for five sets, and loud noises aren’t painful but provoking, so it’s still hard to concentrate, not on everything, but technique or tactics, for sure. Some days, he’s overwhelmed by all of it; worse days, he’s just overwhelmed.</p><p>This is where his recovery takes steps to the left, backwards, forwards again, sloshes back and forth until one great wave crashes and his pulse runs in his temples again, up and down his neck. In the aisle of a grocery store. On the phone. Out, seeing people. They’re all his room in the cold of August, all alone, post-apocalypse.</p><p>Shirabu-sensei doesn’t panic though. “It’s not anything you’ll notice overnight, but there’s ways to work through all of these symptoms. Neck treatment, cognitive training, psychotherapy. Clean eating and exercise, though you’re probably used to those. And then more physical rehab, everyone’s favorite.”</p><p>Tobio doesn’t reply, doesn’t say anything. Even when Shirabu’s mouth becomes one straight line, it seems like he’s saying something— <em>‘of course, it’s actually your favorite, isn’t it?’</em> Tobio thinks that talking to Shirabu-sensei is like trying to play a match with just setter dumps. “You have options, is what I’m saying,” is what he actually speaks when his mouth does open. It’s not particularly convincing. “But in the meantime, you’ll find you need to utilize a number of new habits most days to feel like yourself. Here’s what a few of my other patients have found successful—”</p><p>And so he keeps everything—<em>everything</em>—documented in his journal. And even though he’s supposed to limit his screen time, he also keeps records in his phone’s reminders, or in his alarms, or in his notes, or all three. Even then he misses things. Nothing he’d be so distressed to forget that he’s compelled to, say, throw himself out of bed and drag himself across the floor to take care of, but he misses things. He also writes down not to get so frustrated that he sees red when he misses things. The process needs work. </p><p>“<em>That</em> guy’s your doctor? Sheesh, small world,” said Kindaichi, when they’d all met up at Koganei Park after his appointment. “Bet he’s fun at parties.”</p><p>“We haven’t even seen him in at least ten years, relax,” said Kunimi, who would mention later that he’d known someone else, also concussed, who found their white-noise machine to be instrumental in clearing their head enough to sleep, if Tobio needed help with that kind of thing. “And there’s no way he’s going to any parties.”</p><p>Kindaichi and Kunimi had reacted, laughed, crackled so loud when Tobio shared it was Oikawa behind the strange number that would call his phone and not leave a message that a party of nearby birds had to fly way to safety.</p><p> </p><p>[9:12, 23/10] so you admit you woke up early to watch me even when you weren’t supposed to?!?!?! awww u shouldn't have!!!</p><p>[9:12, 23/10] no really, you shouldn't have</p><p>[9:13, 23/10] and it was where they kept their libero positioned, ik ik. made the center look open when really i just needed to hit the tightest straight of all time past his left side I KNOW</p><p> </p><p>But maybe all of Tobio's efforts haven’t been so useless—he knows his symptoms, their signs and outcomes well enough now to know which of his own rules he’d broken before the sun came even up, that keep him Yawning and slow this morning. Tobio had woken up at an hour unheard of (disrupted sleep schedule) to log on to another perplexing Portuguese streaming site (too much screen time) and catch Shouyou lose his first match of the season (stress) with Yachi, who’d stayed on speakerphone so they could watch together.</p><p>“It’s not that he’s not playing well,” she’d hummed, watching Monte Claro’s libero receive another quick attack that he appeared to not be in position for, all in the blink of an eye, “he’s just—“</p><p>“Not letting his setter do his job,” Tobio had concluded—São Paulo’s Number 19 might be a rookie, but he was definitely right in trying to get Shouyou to spike tight over the left, not over the center, which only appeared to be open, at least until the Monte Clare libero had something to say about it. “If I’d been out there, I’d have gotten the point.”</p><p>“You mean Hinata would have gotten the point,” Yachi ventured.</p><p><em>No</em>, he had thought, sometime around four in the morning.</p><p>Changing into a t-shirt and shorts in the locker room at a quarter past nine in the morning, now he’s thinking he should be less staggered that Shouyou had known to call him out for breaking his best practices. But Shouyou should know he’s not learning to doggy-paddle, with floaties and goggles, so on that front, they’re even.</p><p> </p><p>[9:16, 23/10] still one for me, once pt is over</p><p> </p><p>When pressed to expand on why she wanted to move on to a different company, Yachi said she’d had a moment where she thought, well, maybe it’d be nice to produce the kind of projects that would have thrilled her when she first decided she loved design. She’d liked working on magazine ads enough, liked her coworkers and her short commute from her office to her apartment, but something about creating the graphics and advertisements for the Japanese Skating Federation is so dynamic, or so Yachi had explained, beaming. She’d found out sports were exciting in high school, right at the same time she’d thought maybe she’d go into design, and watching international figure skating competitions from the press box has her white-knuckling the edge of her seat almost as much as any given Spring Interhigh, so yes, she’d say the switch was for the best. No, she has not met Asada Mao yet.</p><p>She did, however, run into another familiar face, taking their lunch break at the same diner equidistant from both the Japanese Skating Federation offices and the Japanese Volleyball Association offices. Tobio had gotten calls from Yachi and Shouyou in the same day—Yachi asking if it was okay to put him in touch with someone from the JVA, Shouyou saying he’d known a guy who’d known a guy with an opportunity he could not refuse. Tobio doesn’t know why either of them didn’t just start with the fact that their someone with an opportunity is just Nekoma’s old captain.</p><p>He was told going into that first meeting to watch out for Kuroo, he’s got a face that suggests there’s something hidden under his rolled-up sleeves, but Tobio thinks he just has a face, a love for volleyball, and a number of good ideas.</p><p>“I have to hand it to you, Kageyama, you and the rest of that Monster Generation certainly made my job a lot easier in these last few years.” Kuroo works from a cubicle, but had been granted special permission to use the corner office with window panes for walls<em>—'The Return of the King’, you know?”</em> Tobio has never seen <em>Lord of the Rings.</em> “It only makes sense that I pay you back in kind, yeah?”</p><p>All this to say, Tobio has work lined up (yeah, Miwa, a <em>real</em> job). More Olympic-tier promotional content, but it’s just Tobio and a few instant replays, explaining basic volleyball terminology in short YouTube videos for all the people who might be tuning in for the first time to watch their National Team set their sights on gold in Paris next summer. Tobio said he’s not great in front of a camera. Kuroo countered that he might find the experience easier than regular press, especially if he’s asked only to explain volleyball as it was explained to him when he first fell in love with the sport—all he requires is that Tobio refrain from using sound effects as adjectives.</p><p>Tobio is supposed to meet the new physical therapist in the pool room once he’s ready.The room’s lights are kept fairly muted, and the wall-to-wall tile betrays the square of floor that will lower into the ground mechanically, adjusting for his height as it fills itself with water. The only other person present—Honda-san, as she introduces herself— is maybe a hair taller than Yachi, and doesn’t wear scrubs, just another standard black polo, the Japanese flag stitched across the left side. He’s sure they’ve never met, but because the world is just that small, she went to college with Ennoshita in Miyagi. This is good, it means Tobio doesn’t have to work hard filling their awkward introduction with conversation after he’d snuck up on her accidentally.</p><p>“I’m sorry, it’s my fault,” she laughs and laughs, tucking short, auburn hair behind her ear. “I just didn’t recognize you with facial hair!"</p><p>“It doesn’t look <em>awful</em>, I suppose,” Miwa had knelt to see him straight on from where he’d sat on his toilet lid once she’d finished his normal haircut, taking his chin in her hands and yanking it side-to-side with more force than was necessary, probably. “But it definitely looks like something you only grew because you couldn’t be bothered to shave.”</p><p>There had been a wave of bad days, mid-September—where the bruise dripping from his temple to his cheekbones to his chin had finally mellowed back to blend, a beard had begun to sprout along his jaw and above his lip. Six days in a row, he had to make a trade-off—he could do the laundry or he could shave his face, he could do his dishes or he could shave his face, he could get through his inbox and continue to assure his parents that he really was alive, alright, or he could shave his face. When The Headache—"no capitals, they’re just migraines” says Shirabu, somewhere—finally broke after a full week of sharp, nagging pain, Tobio had flipped on the light to his bathroom to a five o’clock shadow.</p><p>“That’s what happened though,” Tobio had said, because they’d been over this. “That’s literally what happened.”</p><p>“Okay, well, if you’re not gonna shave it, you have to not shave with <em>intent</em>,” Miwa insisted, digging through her bag for a smaller bag of razors and thin scissors and brown bottles of oil. “Promise you’ll do everything I say or else I’m shearing you right now.”</p><p>There aren’t many guidelines that hadn’t been provided for him in print before starting aquatic therapy, but Tobio listens to everything Honda has to go over with his full attention, really, including her whole-hearted permission to dunk his head under the water once it’s deep enough, if he feels so inclined. “We’ll work hard, but it can be fun, too,” she tells him, “just like swimming when you were a kid, right?” Before long, it’s just Tobio, standing beside the metal support bar positioned in the center of the pool room. He’s nervous in an excited way, or excited in a nervous way, in a way that will constrict his chest and that he’ll write down in his journal later on when he writes down all the things he doesn’t want to forget about today.</p><p>“You ready, Kageyama-san?” Honda asks cheerfully from the wall, and when Tobio nods, she presses the button that lowers the floor. Cool water pours in from vents that slide up where the tile slides down, rushes to his toes, then his ankles, and his hand grips the support bar once his knees are submerged.</p><p>Time passes. Machines gather rust. The world ends on a Tuesday and it doesn’t even rain again until Saturday. Your parents tell you they wish they’d been here sooner and the ex-teammates—friends, he means friends—come by in waves to visit, with leftover birthday cake or onigiri, with advice about moving on from the sport or fun facts about birds, with unnecessary apologies for accidents made on a Saturday in August. You tack the thirty or so handmade cards from Sendai-area second graders onto the blank wall behind your couch. You take a picture of them when you’re done and send it to Tsukishima. He circles the ones that are crooked and sends the picture back. At some point, your V. League victory becomes the passcode on a young man’s phone, at some point you are the veteran setter stepping aside for a fresh face during an Olympic season. </p><p>And he’ll be in good shape for the Olympics, or so he’s told. It’s too early to book a flight for Paris, but Tobio already has tickets for the matches, now that they’re less than a year out. He doesn’t know who he’ll wind up sitting beside yet, though it’s likely it’ll rotate between Sakusa and Komori’s extended family, or Natsu and her girlfriend, or Osamu, who might even have snacks. Right now, his primary, long-term, journal-logged goal is to be able to sit comfortably in the stands, for the whole entire duration of each game, which brings him back to physical therapy. He’s got a lot of work left to do, but that’s okay. That’s really okay.</p><p>Before the Olympics though, he has to get through his press conference, still unscheduled, much to the pain of his manager. He’d watched Ushijima’s again, just to see how he got through the questions, then Bokuto’s. He’d watched Asada Mao’s too, to prepare for his own. He’s still not prepared for his own. He still doesn’t know what he’s supposed say. What, that he’s retiring? He saw the grid in the reflection of the pool, so he’s not retiring, but he’s not playing volleyball tomorrow, if that’s helpful? That albatrosses have the largest wingspan of any living bird? That volleyball is a sport where you look up? Come to think of it, Tobio has a few questions himself that he wants answered, sliding the microphone towards the audience. For Ukai and Takeda, who still have the same phone numbers, about those first few years leading Karasuno, about coaching, about how the store is doing. For Iwaizumi, about how ready his knees will be for running again in a few short weeks. For Yamaguchi and Yachi, about how best to retaliate from the stands of the Hornet’s season opener—would a sign be more or less embarrassing than matching “Tsukishima—11” jerseys? For anyone who knows anything about fishing rods, Tobio hasn’t started looking into them yet.</p><p> </p><p>[9:40, 23/10] ur the worst person I know!!!</p><p>[9:41, 23/10] good luck today, by the way</p><p> </p><p>When the water gets to his chest, not forgetting Honda’s encouragement, Tobio lets himself go under, just for a moment, suspended in a great boundless nothing. Eyes closed, breath held, he eventually breaks back through the surface and stays there, bobbing, wading his arms, and fluttering his good foot lazily. Treading, treading, treading.</p><p>“Excellent work,” Honda smiles, cat-like, referring to her notes before she tells him: “Okay, on the count of three, go ahead and stand up.”</p><p>Tobio stops treading, puts both feet to the floor, and stands.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>hello! i hope you enjoyed (is 'enjoyed' the word i want to use here? hmmm lmao) this fic, consider leaving a comment if you feel so inclined today, either here or on twitter @_roxast, where i maybe tweet lukewarm takes that come to me at 10:30 at night when i take my dog out to pee.</p><p>
  <a href="https://twitter.com/_roxast/status/1388971914635489288?s=20">the twitter graphic for this fic is here, to like and rt if you feel so inclined</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>